


Stars Fading, but I Linger On, Dear

by ChibiSquirt



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreamscapes, Fun With Cling Wrap, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Identity Porn, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oh Thank God They Finally Fucking Kissed!, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Secret Identity, Steve thinks he's a ghost, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Where the period in question is a combination of the 1940's and the late 90's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:32:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8578690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: A Soulmate AU where people meet their soulmate in their dreams.  Of course, not even that solves all the world's problems, especially if one or more of the soulmates has a secret identity...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged this "No Archive Warnings Apply", because they _don't,_ but there are two that come close to applying: Underage -- nothing happens until characters are of age -- and Character Death -- it's that time when Steve is frozen in the ice, and so he _thinks_ he's dead. (He's not, really.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic I've affectionately named, "The Thing". I've got five chapters of buffer, here; we'll be posting approximately one a week until I've burned through that.

Steve was pretty sure he would have loved the library even if it weren’t his Dreamscape.  Every book was a possibility, he felt; with each one, he could tune out the world around him and escape, or learn something, or — as in the case of Jules Verne — both at the same time.  

So the New York Public Library would have been a place he loved to go  _ anyway,  _ but when he was sixteen, it took on another, deeper significance.  

Not everybody had a soulmate; all things considered, about half the people in the world did.  There wasn’t any particular rule about who got one and who didn’t — white people, black people, men, women, city, country, rich or poor, there were folks with soulmates everywhere.  There  _ were  _ some people who said that there were  _ more  _ folks with soulmates in the country, or among the rich, but that was just rumor...  Just like the people who said there were more soulmates than there used to be:  rumor.  

But there was one group that everybody knew for sure was less likely to have a soulmate, and that was all the folks who were as sick as Steve.  Doctor after doctor had told him that he would be lucky to reach adulthood, lucky not to die of one of the dozens of fevers that ripped through the neighborhood; certainly, none of them had ever thought that Steve would have a soulmate.  

Apparently, the universe didn’t care, because when Steve was sixteen, he dreamed himself into the New York Public Library— the downtown branch, in Manhattan.

 

* * *

 

The first dream, he didn’t even notice.  It wasn’t like he’d never been there before; he’d gone up there with his school, once.  Another time, he and his mother had visited after a Labor rally.  So finding himself standing in the middle of a nearly-deserted street outside the library wasn’t really that bizarre, and he had started just ambling about, as you do in dreams.

The street really was nearly empty, although a lot of the folks who  _ were  _ out seemed awfully nosey for New York.  The oddest part about the dream was the sense of urgency: there wasn’t one.  Usually, Steve’s dreams — especially the ones he remembered — were purposeful, full of dire messages to be delivered, or damsels to save, or wrongs to be righted.  This one, though, was just... a street.  There was no  _ plot  _ to this dream.

It lasted five minutes, and Steve was nonplussed for  _ all  _ of them.

 

* * *

 

Here was how it worked:  Not everybody had a soulmate, but if you did, you could meet them in the Dreamscape.  

Sooner or later, you’d meet them in real life, too.  Mrs. Johnson, down the street, had always laughed about the fact that her Dreamscape had been Ellis Island, and as soon as she got off the boat, there her Michael was!  

“That was how I knew I had to come to America,” she would tell them in her thick, thick brogue, which had never vanished even after all her years in Brooklyn.  “I had met my man Michael in the Dreamscape, and my Dreamscape was here; there was just no question of it!”  So Mrs. Johnson — then Katie O’Leary — had gotten on a boat, crossed an ocean, gotten off, and run straight into the only familiar face. 

Mr. Johnson, she always told them, had been smiling.  

Mr. Fitzpatrick, from the apartment next door, had told Steve once about his Dreamscape, too.  “When I was a young man,” he had said tiredly, propping the stump of his left arm on the arm of the chair, “It was just a field.”  He pressed his lips together, shaking his head.  “It was just a damned  _ field.   _ I couldn’t know...  Well.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick had eventually met his sweetheart on the remains of a battlefield in World War I.  She had crawled right on top of him, trying to search his body for rations, only to recognize him and drag him to safety, allowing him to recover.  She nursed him all the way back to health, only to be killed when the war swept back over them.  

Mr. Fitzpatrick never said her name, but even so, the whole neighborhood still knew she’d been German.  Steve had always tried not to hold it against him; it wasn’t Mr. Fitzpatrick’s fault who his soulmate was.

 

* * *

 

The second dream, he had a strong sense of  _ deja vu.  _  The nearly-empty street, the large house—mansion, really — on one side, the library on the other...  The aimless way  _ nothing was happening... _

Steve frowned.  

This was definitely familiar.

Well, he wasn’t going to break into somebody’s  _ house,  _ not even in a dream.  He took the steps up to the library, instead.

It was just as lovely as he remembered it:  soaring ceilings, row after row of warm wooden bookcases...  He sighed, happily.  

But why was he  _ here?   _ Was there something he needed to be  _ doing...? _

Panting and thrashing in confusion, he woke up.

 

* * *

 

Here was how it worked:  If you had a soulmate, sooner or later you would meet them, face to face, in the place you’d dreamed of — and if you  _ didn’t  _ have a soulmate, well, then, you just never entered the Dreamscape at all.  Personally, Steve rather liked that his Dreamscape was the Library; he thought maybe it meant his soulmate would be smart.

 

* * *

 

By the third time, he was sure it had happened before.  Looking around— almost glaring at the otherwise-inoffensive pavement — he knew this was not the first visit.

This was the moment when it hit him for the first time that maybe this was the Dreamscape. __ He was so startled by the idea, his poor, irregular heart started beating hard enough to wake him right back up again.

 

* * *

 

There were certain well-known rules of etiquette for the Dreamscape.  First, one didn’t enter private spaces:  people who met their soulmates in houses, or dormitories, or such, just occupied the part of the Dreamscape outside of the private area, like the street or yard (for houses) or the common rooms (for dormitories).  There had been a famous court case a few years back where a policeman had caught a thief casing a house in the Dreamscape, and when they’d prosecuted the thief, he’d gone to jail.  

Second, it was considered extremely rude to try to  _ break  _ the Dreamscape.  Things like pounding on walls, throwing rocks through windows, and so forth, while obviously they wouldn’t do any permanent damage — those who had tried it typically found the walls and windows magically restored the next time they visited — were just as distracting as they would be in the real world, as well as carrying the implicit rejection of the idea of having a soulmate.  

And third, it wasn’t polite to stare, because in the Dreamscape, people found it difficult to look away from their soulmate.  Mrs. Johnson, for example, always talked about how she’d known Michael was the one for her because “it was almost like he’d been  _ shining!”   _ In the ‘Scape, she had always just looked right at him, and he had looked back.  (When he was  _ very  _ young, Steve had thought that sounded awfully boring.)  

So staring at someone who  _ wasn’t  _ your soulmate, obviously, would give a bit of a mistaken impression.

 

* * *

 

After the third time he had the dream, Steve was certain.  He went around smiling for a week straight, only to get into a fight with Matty Wilson because, in Matty’s view, Steve Rogers just didn’t have anything to smile about that much.  

_ Shows what you know,  _ Steve thought as Matty’s first smashed into his cheekbone.   _ I’ve got a soulmate! _

 

* * *

 

Here was how it worked:  if you had a Dreamscape, then you were going to meet your soulmate.  There had never, as far as Steve knew, been an exception.

He wondered, as he watched the ocean getting closer, how exactly he’d managed to mess that one up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy for betaing! Any remaining mistakes are mine.

 

The most annoying part about haunting the Dreamscape was, he couldn’t sit down.

It made zero sense.  If he could stand on the floor, pick up a book, and could  _ climb over a freaking fence  _ — which he could, even though he always appeared in the Dreamscape in pre-serum form; he’d gotten bored enough to check all three — surely he could sit in a chair?

But no.

He fell through.

_ Every. _

_ Single. _

_ Time. _

Still, though.  There were worse places he could have been haunting than this.  Whichever of the angels had been looking over his shoulder, that guy got a lot of credit from Steve for making his ‘Scape the New York Public Library.

 

* * *

 

Generally speaking, Dreamscapes weren’t  _ quite _ the same as reality.  So there were corners in Steve’s version of the library that didn’t exist in real life, and one little nook in real life that, no matter how hard he’d looked, Steve had never been able to find in his Dreamscape.

But ‘Scapes did change, over time, if the physical location they were based on changed, too.  It was impossible to judge how time was passing in the real world from inside a dream, of course, but soldiers in the 107th had told him about Hank Apkirk, whose sweetheart had found him easily because they were the only two Americans in a Dreamscape based on Coventry.  Hank had been in the ‘Scape when the Blitz hit, and swore up down and sideways that he’d seen the explosions.

So when Steve saw changes happening in his ‘Scape, he wasn’t too worried - he couldn’t have been dead for too long, after all.  Nobody invested in libraries first, but still, it was probably just an excess of funds after the Recovery.

 

* * *

 

The  _ other _ thing about Dreamscapes was that, although you would see all the same people there, most folks who ended up meeting their soulmate in a city didn’t see them all that  _ often, _ simply because cities had pretty dense populations.  So you would get to know a few familiar faces, but for the most part, it was so crowded that people didn’t really notice each other.  There’d even been cases of mistaking your soulmate for someone else you'd met here through the years.

Steve figured it was a little different when a guy was immaterial; though.   _ That  _ was pretty noticeable; people would only need to see it once.

So he tried to stay out of the way.  He took to climbing the bookshelves — there was always something interesting to read, he usually grabbed a stack of two or three books to take with him — and hiding out on top of them, where no one was likely to go barging into him.

After all, he didn’t know how a ghost could have a soulmate, but it was probably best if he didn’t go panicking the general public over it.

 

* * *

 

Every once in awhile, someone came up to him.  There was a girl in a pretty, wide-skirted dress that came up to him, ponytail swaying, and asked, tremulously, if they had met; he had assured her that they hadn’t.

“It’s just,” she bit her lip, “I haven’t  _ seen  _ him yet, and there’s so many young men going off to the war...”  

Steve’s heart fell.  He had thought — well, hoped — as he plunged towards the water that they might be through with all of that...

“I’m not him,” Steve said gently.  She was very pretty, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t look away from her or anything like that.  In fact, he hadn’t even noticed her until she came up to him.  “But you know, I haven’t met mine yet, either.  You’ve got time.”  

He wondered uneasily if that was even true — after all,  _ he  _ hadn’t met  _ his  _ soulmate before passing.  On the other hand, here he was, haunting his Dreamscape— so maybe meeting her after his death would count?  

He sighed mentally, watching her blond ponytail whip back and forth.  The rest of his stack was all nonfiction, and he just wasn’t in the mood, anymore...  

He got down to go hunt up some Twain.

 

* * *

 

He got to know the librarians, too.  

There weren’t many:  only half the “real-world” librarians had soulmates at all, and of those, most had a different Dreamscape.  But there were three people — two women and a man — who staffed both the actual library and the one in the ‘Scape.  

James was older, and sometimes Steve wondered about his soulmate:  James was crusty, wild-eyed, and looked constantly as if he had just misplaced his pipe.  Steve had never met James’ soulmate, and, when he asked Francine about it, she whispered that James’ soulmate had died in childbirth years before she, Francine, had met him.

Francine herself was a redhead, both bubbly and angry in the stereotypical manner of that type, but self-mocking enough to roll her eyes when this was pointed out.  Steve first met her when she stormed up to him,  _ furious  _ that he kept  _ taking down books  _ all the time.  

“I put them back up,” he’d responded, stung.

_ “That’s even worse,”  _ she’d fumed.  

They had, eventually, come to an agreement, but it was a rocky start.  

Winnie, the third librarian, hadn’t actually been a librarian when Steve met her; she had been a janitor.  It was only once she had pulled out all the stops in gunning for the promotion that they had, grudgingly, allowed her to move up.  She was ruthlessly good at it, according to Francine, who held her in a sort of exasperated affection that spoke volumes; she was also even-tempered and observant, and was the first person to notice that Steve didn’t age. 

“So what’s your story?” she asked in her calm, husky voice.  

Steve shrugged, embarrassed, and told her the truth:  that, as far as he knew, he had died in World War II, and was haunting the ‘Scape until he met his soulmate.  

She said, “I’m sorry,” and meant it.  She tried to put a comforting hand on his arm, but of course she just swiped right through him.

 

* * *

 

He learned about cars.  He thought he could probably have driven one pretty well, if he had still got a body.

He read about the new computing machines they were coming up with, which sounded like something out of a science fiction novel (but then, he was hardly one to talk).

He read poetry —  _ so _ much poetry — Shakespeare’s sonnets and Hardy’s pessimistic meliorism, “My Last Duchess”and “Ozymandias” and then, sobbing, everything ever written by Wilfred Owen.

He read about art, and art technique, and art theory, and famous art, and even found books full of beautiful print after beautiful print, and lost hours just flipping through them, page after page...

He read about exercise, about bodybuilding, about muscles and muscle groups, about carbs and fats and proteins and how they all came together.  Not that it mattered: a ghost couldn’t eat, and even if he could, he certainly couldn’t exercise.  (And Steve had always been scrawny in his Dreamscape, both before and after Rebirth.)

He taught himself French.

Time passed.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve looked up with a smile as Francine shelved a book beside him with unnecessary force.  “Long day?” he asked sympathetically.

“Very,” she agreed, mouth twisting.  She shoved another book back in place, and slanted a look at him out of the corner of her thick-framed cat’s-eye glasses.  “John died,” she said shortly.  

John was Francine’s husband.  

“You’re kidding,” Steve said, shocked.  “What happened?”

She shrugged.  “Got sick.”  She shook her head, and looked up at him.  “Have you heard of HIV yet?”  

“No,” Steve said, baffled.  “What is it?”

Francine picked something up off the cart — a magazine, this time — and slapped it against his chest.  They both looked down at it, mutually shocked that she could actually hit him with it.  “Here,” she said.  “Read.”

 

* * *

 

Steve read.

He cried, a bit.

 

* * *

 

“Are you  _ still  _ hiding away up there?”

Steve looked out over the edge of his latest nest.  “What else am I supposed to do?” he asked, and Winnie made a face.  She wore spectacles, now, and her dark, tight curls were streaking with gray.  She still cut a trim figure, though; she’d never introduced him to her husband, but Steve privately hoped he was a leg man, because Winnie had a heck of set of stems.

“Get out, get up, go see the sun rise...?”  She tilted her head aggressively.  “Love your fellow man, help the homeless, feed puppies and kitties in the shelter on eighth?”

“Can’t do it stuck in here, can I?”  

Winnie met his raised eyebrow with unimpressed sangfroid.  “The puppies and kitties you can.  The shelter on Eighth, the local vet met his sweetheart there.  The pets all have real personalities.”

Steve thought about it, and set his book on the reshelving cart.  

Puppies and kitties  _ did  _ sound pretty great...

 

* * *

 

“Still hanging around?”  

Francine hadn’t been in for a while; Winnie had said she’d been sick, and everyone knew it was hard to reach Dreamscape when you were sick.  

Steve looked up with a smile, and then froze.  “Yeah,” he said, trying not to sound shocked at Francine’s skeletal thinness, or at the haggard cast of her cheeks.  When had she stopped being a girl...?  He tried to remember, but he couldn’t pull up an image.  When had she changed in her red ponytail for gray, artificially-even curls?  When had her face gotten so thin— so gaunt?  

She was an old woman, now, and for the first time, Steve really let himself wonder:  how much time had  _ passed?   _

He cleared his throat.  “Yeah.  Yeah, Francine; I’m still hanging around.”  

Francine smiled vaguely, leaned in, and patted his hand.  The tendons stood out proud in her wrist, and her fingers looked like claws.  “Good for you,” she said before wandering off.

Steve looked at his hand, still tingling with a chill where she’d patted it, then up at the library exit, watching her wend her way into the light.  The afternoon sun seemed to flare as it silhouetted her at the door, and then she was gone.

Winnie was crying at the circulation desk.  

 

* * *

 

They were re-doing the carpets again.  Steve wasn’t sure why; didn’t they just  _ do  _ that?

 

* * *

 

There was a boy at the circulation counter.  

Not really a boy, of course: access to the Dreamscape came at puberty, which Steve had always privately thought was a very good thing.  But still —  a very young man.  Fifteen?  Sixteen?  He looked to be trying to flirt with Winnie — Winnie appeared to find this  _ hilarious —  _ but at the same time, his eyes were darting around the building, taking everything in.

For no reason Steve could think of, he found himself annoyed, and took his stack of books up to the second floor to read.

 

* * *

 

The next time he noticed him, Steve saw the boy — alright, the young man— in the middle of a group of young ladies, all of them dressed in that strange fashion Steve was assuming was “modern”, all of them pressing close to him as if he were someone important.

Steve snorted, and took his books upstairs again.

 

* * *

 

The third time, the boy was again surrounded by girls, and this time Steve asked Winnie about it.  “Who is he?”

“Who’s who?” she asked, refilling the pencils by the strange machines no one used.

“The boy,” Steve answered.  He nodded his head towards the young man and his knot of fifteen different giggling girls.  “The one the girls all go mad for.”  He considered the sight.  “He’s handsome, or he will be, when he’s grown.”

Winnie followed his gaze, and snorted.  “He is,” she agreed.  “Also kind, and quite brilliant.  But, at least to that crowd, there’s something else that’s a little more important.”

Steve looked up, questioning.  

She nodded over at them again.  “That’s Sunset Bain, who is one of the most venal people I’ve ever met; there’s Mary Louise Rockefeller — yes, one of  _ those  _ Rockefellers, and I could not  _ believe  _ that  _ she  _ had a Dreamscape in the library, but there you go— “

Steve realized he was scowling and evened his face out.  “Are you saying they like him because he’s  _ rich?”  _

Winnie shrugged, and Steve had seen that shrug often enough before to know it meant the end of the conversation.  “Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.”  

It sounded like she was quoting something, but it wasn’t a reference Steve understood.

 

* * *

 

Now the boy was watching  _ him. _

Electric blue eyes framed in dark lashes blinked at him thoughtfully over a book the boy was not even pretending to read, so Steve put down his book and gestured, politely, for him to come over.

“Why were you looking at me?” he asked, when the boy was standing in front of his current shelf.

“Because you weren’t,” the boy said, jostling his feet.

“Beg your pardon?”

A dark head nodded toward the other patrons of the Dreamscape’s library.  “Look around — because that’s what everybody else is doing, too.  Everybody knows they’re here to meet their Soulmate, and they’re all so eager for it they can’t sit still.  Look around, walk around, meet everybody’s eyes — they’re hoping to get ‘the spark’, aren’t they?  That  _ sense of connection that marks a true and binding Soulbond —” _

The boy threw his hand over his forehead melodramatically, and Steve snorted.

“But you’re not,” he continued.  “You never have, I’ve been watching you for a month.  You just sit up here - usually here, this week, but the first week you were over there —”

Steve had thought he’d switched shelves  _ yesterday; _ that was  _ three weeks ago?! _

“ — and you read.  So.  What’s up?  Why aren’t you looking for —”

_ ”Don’t _ get so dramatic again.”

“ — Fine.  But still; what gives?”

Steve sighed.  “Look, do you wanna join me up here?”

The boy looked surprised, then shrugged.  “Sure,” he said casually.  “Gimme a hand up?” 

Steve reached down, and the boy smacked his own hand...

... right through it.

The young man stared. “The  _ hell?” _

Steve smiled, bitterly. “I’m dead,” he explained.  “Sorry for the shock; that was really the only way I could think of to prove it.”  The boy looked up, wide-eyed, and Steve found himself noticing all over again how blue they were.  “Sorry.”  There was really only one way to say it: “I’m a ghost.”

The boy stared at him, mouth slightly open.  “Oh,” he breathed.  “Oh, no.”

Steve shrugged, feeling pretty awkward.  “I don’t know why I’m haunting the  _ Dreamscape, _ exactly…  Maybe I’ve got to let my soulmate know I’m dead?”

“Oh,  _ god, no!” _ the kid repeated, tearing up.  “I think?  I, um.”  He swallowed, swiping at his eyes.  “I think you just did.  I mean, I think  _ I’m—”   _ His voice croaked and broke into silence.

It took a minute for it to hit.

When it did, Steve gaped, then jumped and tumbled down from the shelf as fast as possible, no climbing — not important right now.  He tried to hug the kid, but of course it didn’t work — he couldn’t even give him a hand  _ up, _ he definitely couldn’t  _ hug him… _

Desperately, he grabbed the two biggest books he could see, and pressed them in on either side against the kid, squeezing as hard as he could.

The kid looked up with swimming eyes.  “What — what are you doing?”  The books shifted awkwardly as the boy wiped at his eyes and nose, pretending there was nothing there to see.

“I can’t — a hug.  This is the closest I can get to —”  He dropped the books (they hit carpet with a muffled  _ thump) _ and held out his hand.  “Steve Rogers,” he introduced himself.

The boy pasted on a smile.  He passed through his hand on the first try, but managed to hold his hand so that the palm just brushed Steve’s on the second.  “Tony Stark,” he said, sniffling.

Steve reached up, but of course he couldn’t brush the tears away, either.  “I’m so sorry, Tony.  I really am.  I am so,  _ so _ sorry…”

Tony’s knees buckled, and he curled up, sobbing, in the recessed area where the bookshelf would mostly block him from view.  All Steve could do was sit next to him and stand guard…

...so that’s what he did.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy for beta-ing, and soothing my rampant fears about this and the next few chapters! I'm posting this a bit early, but the update day is still Thursday, so I have eight days to put up the next one. :P

The first time Tony entered the Dreamscape, of course he didn’t know what it was.  It just looked like his _house,_ and there was nothing special about that!  He just wandered around for a while, mostly looking for Jarvis, and woke up when he couldn’t find him.

He didn’t notice anything weird the second time, either.  He did figure out he was in a dream pretty quick, though— that was one good thing— because no one else was there, and if no one else were in the house, he’d be back in boarding school because they wouldn’t have called him home.  Ergo, et cetera, case closed:  Dream.   

The _third_ time, he actually started to get ticked off.  “What the shit is this?” he demanded of his father’s closed workshop doors, glaring around the empty hallway.

 _The empty hallway,_ his brain repeated.

Wait a minute...

The _empty_ hallway!

There was a toolbox under the sink in the kitchen, and in less than two minutes Tony had it back at the door, working on the lock.  It took only two more minutes to realize that... well...

...that Tony didn’t know anything about picking locks.  

He swiped his hand through his hair and puffed out a frustrated breath before standing back and considering the door, head dipping to the side.  

“Only as strong as the stuff it’s attached to,” Tony concluded, “And anyway, this is a _dream._ It’s not like anything here _matters.”_

And on that note, he headed out to the garden storage shed for the chainsaw.

Infuriatingly, he woke up just as he got the door open.

 

* * *

 

He woke up the next two times, too, even though he eventually started going straight to the shed because _fuck it._

 

* * *

 

The time after that, he skipped the workshop, and just brewed C4 in the kitchen.  After all, it wasn’t like anybody was there to stop him.

 

* * *

 

The time after _that,_ he took the C4 — which was still in the kitchen, because apparently the lack of continuity was only for his father’s lab?  These dreams made no sense, what the fuck — straight down to the workshop doors.  He wasn’t sure how much to use, so he just used all of it, hiding around the corner and down the hall until the boom shook the house.  He was eager — possibly _too_ eager— and charged in through the smoke and crumbling ceiling, hacking and coughing but determined to get a good look around his father’s sanctum.  

It was _amazing._ Metal tables gleaming, the paraphernalia of five branches of science scattered around:  rock samples keeping company with crucibles, test tubes and wet-mounted slides, computers and — was that a rocket? — and even the little robot Tony had made his father for Christmas eight years ago.   

“Oh, my god,” Tony groaned.  

He probably didn’t have much time until he woke up...  

He started with the rocket.

 

* * *

 

All told, it actually took most of a year before it occurred to Tony he might be in the Dreamscape.  He wasn’t even in the Dreamscape when it happened, embarrassingly enough; he was actually in the car, riding home for spring break, in the real world.

Tony had never heard much about the Dreamscape.  Neither of his parents had a soulmate, not even to each other, and Jarvis might have, but never brought it up.  Tony also had never discussed it with his peer group, because frankly he was rather short on peers, and even in his first year at MIT had not made many friends.  So most of his information on the place came from overheard gossip at his parent’s parties, or the children of his parents’ friends.  

For that reason, there were a lot of things Tony hadn’t actually been aware of about the Dreamscape.  One of those things he didn’t know was that it was rare to think much about your Dreamscape outside of the place.  Not that it didn’t happen — it did, and to make matters more confusing, a lot of the most famous stories about soulmates included references to the few times it _did_ happen — but for the most part, people’s dreams were dreams and real life was real life, and people didn’t think about the Dreamscape much more than any other dream, and for similar reasons:  it was difficult to remember, and seemed illogical, numinous, and inconstant upon waking reflection.

(A week after he realized where exactly he’d been spending his sleeping hours, Tony would go on a massive research binge, during which he would discover the following:  that the sleeping hours were the ones in which humans cleaned out their brains, including clearing the long-term memory, so dreams fade and fog as that process continues.  But memorable dreams linger, and in general brains are very adaptable, so there were and would always be some brains able to remember all the details of their Dreamscapes.)  

At any rate, Tony himself barely remembered his ‘Scape, and it wasn’t until he was sitting next to Jarvis, thinking about things he could share with him that wouldn’t get him in trouble — his recent adventure re-wiring the school President’s phone to ring with “Baby One More Time” _definitely_ didn’t count — that he realized that was actually where he’d been.  

What he _actually_ said was, “I’ve been having some really weird dre — oh, _shit!”_ And then he stared out the passenger window with shocked eyes.  “Oh, shit, shit, _shit!”_

Jarvis raised his eyebrows.  “I beg your pardon?”

Tony’s pulse was going a million miles an hour, it seemed like, and he could feel himself turning red.  “I, uh...  I just realized I’ve been doing something wrong.  Really messed up, actually.”

Jarvis braked gently as they came to a light.  “I am sorry to hear that, sir; however, I am quite sure that you will rectify that mistake with all appropriate haste.”

Tony clenched his fist and looked out the window again.  “I sure will, Jarvis.”  He bit his lip.  “Definitely.”

 

* * *

 

He didn’t reach the Dreamscape that night, of course.  Hell, he barely even _slept_ that night; he was too keyed up.   

Around three, he finally gave in, got up, and snuck down to the library.  If he couldn’t reach the place, the least he could do was _research_ it.

 

* * *

 

The library, it turned out, had _quite a lot_ of books about soulmates in it.  The problem was, almost none of them were non-fiction.  Somehow, Tony didn’t think _The Secret Lover of the Marquis’ Heart_ was going to be what he was really looking for, here...   _If only there were a_ bigger _library,_ he thought, standing in his plaid flannel pajamas, frustrated enough to pitch a fit and, at this point, tired and sleep deprived, too.  

He grabbed _Mirabella’s Clandestine Match_ anyway, and stomped off to bed.

It took him until the first bite of cereal the next morning to remember that the New York Public Library was right across the street.

 

* * *

 

The 71st Street Branch of the NY Public Library was _huge,_ and it did take Tony a few minutes to find the non-fiction.  Luckily, the Dewey Decimal system was a known quantity, and, once there, he was able to locate the books on soulmates rather quickly.  

Which of those books were any _good_ turned out to be a larger question.  Tony found himself fuming, later that week, over the _hundreds_ of contradictions he had found.  Generally speaking, psychologists disagreed with psychiatrists, doctors disagreed with biologists, the philosophers were totally useless because they were all busy arguing about the potential existence of free will, and the _romantics,_ god help them, gleefully ignored all of them equally (except when it furthered their purposes, of course.)  

“This is _useless,”_ Tony snapped, thumping the latest book shut.  

Once he’d realized it was the Dreamscape, of course, the first problem that had occurred to Tony was the question of why his ‘Scape _didn’t have anyone else in it._

(Maybe his father was right, and he didn’t have a soulmate, after all.)  

But none of the resources available seemed to have any advice to offer him, and he refused to believe he was the first person in millennia to encounter this particular problem!

Sourly, he gathered all the books up and headed over to the library, where the lady on the desk was the same one who had been there when he checked the books out in the first place.  “Back already?” she asked.  “You’re a quick reader.”

He couldn’t look her in the eye.  “Sure,” he agreed.  

“Find what you were looking for?”  The books beeped as she scanned them into the system:   _Beep.  Beep.  Beep._

“Not really.”  

 _Beep.  Beep._ The librarian had her eyebrows raised.  

“Wanna talk about it?” she asked.  

Tony... _hesitated._  

He knew that voice.  Not from the librarian, obviously, this was only the second time he’d met her.  But in general — Jarvis, mostly.  (His mother, once.)  It was a voice that thought he was being an idiot, but did not, miraculously, think any less of him for that.  

And usually it came from someone with pretty good judgement where idiocy was concerned.  

Tony looked up.  

The librarian was a tall, silver-haired lady with skin the honey-color of mixed-race heritage.  She wore glasses, but they were thin, wire-rimmed half-moons:  readers, most likely, especially because they had slipped down her nose and she was studying him over them.  Her hair was chin-length and well-groomed, but not obsessively styled; her clothes were large, baggy, and comfortable-looking, but not ragged or messy.  If Tony were allowed only one word to describe her, based solely on her appearance and limited interactions with him, it would be _sensible._

He took the leap.  

“Sure,” he said.  “You ever heard of a Dreamscape with no soulmate in it?”

Her eyebrows shot up.  

 

* * *

 

Her name, it turned out, was Wilhelmina — “Call me Miss Winnie, everyone does.” — and she herded him back to the reference desk, tagging out with the moist-looking white guy currently seated behind that desk.  “I know a bit about soulmates,” she allowed as she switched out the chairs — probably, Tony thought uncharitably, looking for one that wasn’t repulsively warm already.  “I found a... puzzle... in my own Dreamscape, and I’ve been working on it for years.”

“Where’s yours?” Tony asked.

Her eyebrows shot up again.

“What?” he asked.  “Is that not something we ask?”

She closed her eyes again and shook her head.  “No.  Actually, it’s _not_ something you’re supposed to ask.”

Tony’s shoulders jerked in a shrug before he was really aware of the movement.  “Sorry,” he said.  “I guess...  No one I know _talks_ about this stuff.  I don’t really know the rules.”

“Apology accepted.”  She looked at him over her glasses again.  “And you seem like you’re having kind of a bad day, so I’ll tell you:  it’s here.”

Tony looked over quickly, curiosity sparked, and she smiled at him.  

“I met my Jimmy here, right where you’re standing, twenty years ago,” she said, “and we’ve been together ever since.”  

It was hard _not_ to smile, in the face of something like that.

“Now then,” she said briskly, sitting up straighter.  “You have a Dreamscape with no soulmate, you said?  That’s not possible.  So either your soulmate is invisible, or he or she hasn’t been born yet, or — and this is the part that I think is the most likely — you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“In the wrong _place?”_ Tony frowned.  “I thought your Dreamscape was, you know...   _The Place.”_ Admittedly, that was what one of the romance novels had called it, but it captured the essence of his argument well enough.

Miss Winnie just smiled, amused.  “Approximately,” she said.  “Compared to searching the whole world over for love, a Dreamscape is definitely an improvement.  But it’s not exact.  Almost no one, for example, finds themselves entering the Dreamscape in a building.”

Tony feels his eyes bug out.  “They don’t?”  Maybe he _hadn’t_ been visiting the Dreamscape...

“I said _almost,”_ she pointed out calmly, having read his expression.  “It happens.  But the more usual situation is finding yourself in a street, and then you pick a building to enter.”

“Oh,” Tony said.  His heart thumped hard a few times in his chest as the panic receded.  “So what if you pick the wrong building?”  

She shrugged.  “You try a different one.  It’s not a perfect system like the poets like to claim it is; there’s a lot of guesswork.”  She told him stories she’d read over the years, of people who had gotten it wrong one way or another:  walked the wrong direction when they arrived in their ‘Scape, or looked for the wrong person, or didn’t approach their soulmate when they met in real life.  Tony found himself telling her, in turn, about his own ‘Scape, and how his only immediate thought had been how to get into his father’s lab.  

She took off her glasses and covered her eyes with one long-fingered hand.  “You made C4 in your Dreamscape’s kitchen.” she repeated.

Tony waved it off.  “It’s not like it’s hard,” he pointed out.  “And at least this way, I got to practice in a place where the explosion wouldn’t be so risky.”

She shook her head, silver curls bouncing like slinkies.  “Alright.  Tony, was it?  I understand if you don’t want to, but would you be willing to tell me about your Dreamscape?  I promise, I won’t tell anyone, and maybe we can problem-solve for you.”

Tony bit his lip — she had, after all, just told him this was a rude question — but, hell, he was already trusting her, anyway.  “It’s the house?” he said.  “My house, I mean.  Stark Mansion.”  He jerked his thumb in the appropriate direction.

She followed his finger, then looked back into his eyes.  “Well... If your soulmate appeared on the street,” she pointed out, “they probably entered my library, just like the rest of them do.  We get a good-sized crowd in here; next time you’re in the Dreamscape, just come on over.”

“Alright,” Tony agreed, and tried his _charm the adults_ smile on her.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah, well, you can thank me by not making C4 in _our_ kitchen,” she said dryly, and started picking up the various books they’d gone over — a different batch than the ones he had just returned.  “Do you want to check these out?”

Tony looked at them, and shrugged.  “Might as well,” he said.  

 

* * *

 

“Miss Winnie!”  Tony hopped up to the Circulation desk, leaning on it and grinning at her.  The sun slanted in through the high-paned windows at the front of the library, and it felt a bit like dancing through sunbeams to perch like he was.  “I made it!”  

“You did!”  She smiled more readily in the Dreamscape, Tony noticed; but then, there weren’t any other library employees here, most likely, so that made sense:  she could be more herself.  

He found his gaze skittering around the library, taking in the sights.  “This is weird,” he admitted aloud.  “There are more people, but almost none of them seem to care that they’re actually in a _library.”_

“As long as they keep their voices down, I don’t care what they care about.”  Miss Winnie’s voice was dry.

Tony grinned over at her.  “You might even call the contrast _night and day,”_ he cracked, and she snorted at him.  

“Nice try, young man.  Well, are you looking around?  See anybody with a shine?”

He almost did, for a second; there was a tall, almost skeletally-thin young man watching from much further back in the stacks who caught his eye.  But he scowled and vanished before Tony could get a good look, and anyway, there was a knot of pretty ladies at the reading desks.  

Tony smiled gratefully at Miss Winnie.  “I guess I’m going to find out,” he offered.

“That’s the spirit,” she said.  "Now get off my counter." She patted him gently on the arm as he moved away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea whether the NYPL used the DDS in the late 90's; my college library always used LoC classification, which seemed much more sensible. But I didn't really have a good way to check, and it's only one detail of the fic, so I guessed; if there any irate New York librarians out there fuming about this, feel free to drop me a line. (Preferably before next week, because I think I have Tony using the DDS to track his progress through the library next chapter...)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to Valmasy for a beta! This is the last "shorter" chapter; the first was around 1k, the next three all around 2.6k. The next two (five and six, respectively) are both 4k+, so that'll get us going a bit faster. Also, I'm sorry, and I tried, but seriously, forget this "one chapter a week" thing; it turns out, I am not made for that.
> 
> ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS ART!!! The extra-talented adarksweetness (aka thisphenomenalcage on Tumblr) has made me a pretty! Link is: <http://thisphenomenalcage.tumblr.com/post/152677572712/for-chibisquirt-and-the-amazing-perfect-very>

His soulmate was a ghost.

 _Only you, Tony,_ he scolded himself, wiping his eyes desperately as he sat up in bed: he had woken himself up, crying.   _Only you would have a soulmate who was already dead when you met him._

Was that even possible?  Had it ever happened before?  Miss Winnie would know— she seemed to have something of an expertise on the subject of soulmates.  Tony threw his legs out of bed and stood, intending to head up the hallway for a glass of water, only to freeze before he’d made it to the door of his room.

The thing was, Tony wasn’t one of those guys who remembered his Dreamscape too well.  He could remember the library itself, and the house, too, in perfect detail; but that was because he had visited them while awake.  His Dreamscape itself tended to twist and vague before he’d gotten all the way through breakfast, even.

Panicking, he tried to recall every detail of his soulmate’s face.

 _Steve,_ he remembered.   _Steve, what was his last name...  Something normal and forgettable, shit!_

He’d have to ask when he found him again.

 _If_ he found him again.

If his soulmate was even _there_ the next time he got to the Dreamscape, and hadn’t gone into the fucking _light_ in the meantime...

 _Steve,_ Tony reminded himself hastily.

Steve had had blue eyes, blond hair...  Very tall and skinny.  Big bony hands, artistic fingers.  Stubborn chin, the sort that leant itself to handsomeness when combined with the more muscular jaw that Steve lacked...  Instead, Tony's soulmate had a raw look, the points of his face sharply prominent.  High cheekbones, long lashes, and full lips, though, still made him very pretty...

Tony blushed.  Possibly his soulmate wasn’t even looking for a romance from him; he’d certainly seemed startled enough when Tony just told him they were soulmates.  But if he _were_ interested...

Well.

Tony would definitely be fine with that.  His soulmate had been, uh...

 _Ethereal?  Luminous?_ _Angelic,_ Tony decided.  

He had also been genuinely sorry to be causing Tony distress, which Tony had been a little uncertain how to handle.

 _Oh god, he’s so...!_ Tony tried to put it into words, but his thoughts were basically the equivalent of one of those giant exclamation points that showed up over characters in comic strips.  He only knew that he was halfway to infatuated already, and he’d only met the guy for five minutes.

 _It’s my soulmate, though.  I’m_ allowed _to be in love with my soulmate!  That’s how it_ works!

Sure, there were people who had platonic soulmates.  There were even people who argued for the _superiority_ of platonic soulmates!  But Tony had never thought he’d be one of those, and it wasn’t looking that way for him now, either.  

Besides which,Tony had realized two years ago that he was, well...   _Inclined towards the broadest possible spread of his affections,_ had been Jarvis’ carefully-non-judgemental phrase for it.  Howard would have had a lot of  rather worse ones, if he knew, which he _didn't,_ because Tony was well aware of all the ways he was already letting Howard down, and there was no call to go adding to them.   _Bisexual_ was more technical, he supposed, but he’d always resisted adopting the label for himself, if only because of a lingering hope that it would _go away,_ eventually.  He was a failure enough without being a pouf.

Still.  

 _I guess it depends on what Steve Whatever-his-last-name-was wants, but....  He’s_ awfully _pretty..._

Steve was lean and graceful-looking, but not actually graceful, and Tony’s immediate reaction had been to want to feed Steve a sandwich and then bury himself in the man’s arms.  He was all cheekbones and knobby bones, but he was Tony’s, and he was beautiful.

 _Angelic, even,_ Tony’s mind insisted.

_Right._

Tony took a deep breath, and went to go get that water — before he put the cart _too_ many miles before the horse.

 

* * *

 

He slept again that night, but it wasn’t the right kind of sleep; he didn’t reach the Dreamscape for another three nights, in fact, but in between he had scripted a website for Professor Harrison and taken his robotics final and also gotten much, _much_ drunker than he really should have, so that was kind of understandable.

When he did finally make it back into the Dreamscape, though, he dashed across the street quite probably faster than he ever could have in real life, bursting through the doors of the library hard enough that Miss Winnie looked up and scowled at him.  

“Sorry,” he called, and then hurtled back in the stacks, looking at the tops of the shelves because that was where he’d seen Steve perched before.  Not in Philosophy, not in Psychology, not in Religion...  Tony kept his eyes up top, which is why he didn’t see Steve before he ran headlong into him — and then _out of_ him — in the middle of Social Sciences.

“GYAhhhh!”

Tony stumbled to a halt and pivoted, apologies already on his lips when he saw Steve standing there, eyes wide and hands clenched on a hardback.

“It’s fine,” Steve cut him off.  “It’s alright; I’m fine.  I was just... uh... startled.”  

“Oh, god, I’m _so_ sorry — I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was looking for you!”

Steve’s eyes widened and he looked down, the back up again, lit from within with a slow, shy smile.  “Well,” he said, “You found me.”

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take Steve long to figure out that Tony was still growing; it wasn’t quite that every time he saw him, he was bigger, but… It felt like that. That being said, he _was_ surprised when Tony told him he was in college, mostly because Tony seemed awfully small to be eighteen years old.

“Oh, I’m not,” Tony said offhandedly when Steve asked. “I’m a genius. I have dozens of patents already, I speak four languages — five if you count my French, which my tutor says you shouldn’t, but don’t listen to him, he’s an a — a jerk— ”  Tony had already figured out that Steve didn’t like it when he swore.  “— And I'm basically getting my degrees for fun.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t even be going, except Dad says I _should_ go, and I’m not an adult yet, so I can’t actually refuse.”

Steve stared, wide-eyed, mouth dropped just a bit slack at the info-dump. “Jeez,” he said, “How did _I_ luck into getting someone like _you?”_

Tony grinned, shy and brilliant at the same time. “Dunno,” he smirked. “You _could_ say, you’ve died and gone to Heaven.”

Steve busted out laughing, and several of the Dreamscape library patrons looked around. Tony doubled over with snickers.

“Oh, good,” Tony gasped. “I was afraid that one might have gone too far.”

“Nah,” Steve said, grinning over at him. He ran a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his eyes. “I’d say that was just far enough. Hey, listen— Tony.”

Tony looked up, blue eyes alight with laughter, sparkling from behind lashes as thick and black as a crow’s wing. His dark brows were dancing, his cheeks lightly flushed, and his lips were shiny and pink because Tony had a habit of biting them around Steve.

He was going to be a breathtakingly handsome man, someday.  Steve wasn’t sure his heart would survive.

“If this is my afterlife," Steve said, "If hanging around you forever is what I get to do as my Heaven — well, then, I’d say it’s a damned good Heaven.”

Tony froze, looking over at him, body leaning forward slightly as if he wanted to press himself into Steve, but —

— That wasn’t an option.

Instead, Tony grabbed a book off the table and slung it behind Steve’s back; Steve grabbed one and tucked it around his stomach; and when Tony squeezed a hug on him, the two books pressed him between them.

It was close enough.

_(For now...)_

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take long for them to develop a routine:  Tony would show up with news of his day (or his week, or even the outside news — apparently, there was a scandal going on in the White House), and they would discuss it while curled up, one braced on each side of the largest, flattest book they could find.   _(Where’s Waldo,_ usually.)  Usually, they would head to the children’s section, where there were plenty of pillowy chairs but almost never any other people.  (Access to the Dreamscape came at puberty, so it really wasn’t much of a surprise when the children’s section was always empty.)    

They would sprawl out, either on the comfy low benches or enormous bean bags, or on the vibrantly-patterned, well-padded carpet, and take turns reading.  When Steve chose the book — which was most of the time; Tony would listen to anything, as long as Steve was the one reading it, it seemed — it was usually either history or literature.  Tony’s choice was almost always fiction, and not the classic literature kind, either:  under his direction, Steve read everything from _Mrs. Morris’ Lost Lover_ to _Rise of the Killer Mutant Raccoons._  The only pre-requisite, it seemed, was that each book be designed to make Steve laugh.

(It worked.)

 

* * *

 

 _Steve is going to drive me absolutely insane,_ Tony thought happily, sprawling back against the bean bag chair cockeyed, most of his weight on his right forearm, with enough force that his left leg swung a couple of feet in the air.  “Oof!”

The problem was, Steve was just so.  Freaking.   _Good!_

He loved literature and nonfiction alike, although his greatest preference appeared to be for poetry.   _(O_ _f course, he’s a romantic.  Because just what this needed was for him to be_ more _perfect!)_

He treated not only Tony, but also everyone else he encountered, with respect.

He was even a patriot, of all things.  They had been discussing World War II recently – Steve seemed to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject; apparently, that was the war that had claimed his life – and Steve had actually, genuinely, without being prompted, gone on a huge diatribe about why America was the greatest country in the world.  And, honestly, Tony had some pretty great arguments to the contrary – starting with “educational systems in Scandinavian countries” and ending with “bluegrass” – but he hadn’t been able to muster them in the face of Steve’s _complete un-ironic passion_ for the country they’d both been born in.

Unfortunately, part of Steve’s wholesomeness seemed to extend to a complete lack of romantic interest in Tony.  Which…

Okay.  To be fair:  it wasn’t Steve’s fault if he wasn’t gay.  Or – whatever it would be.   _Tony_ wasn’t gay, he was just…

…just really, really infatuated with Steve.

(Well, a little bit.

A _smidgen,_ really.

Just….  prone to obsessively counting Steve’s _eyelashes,_ that was all.   _No big deal,_ right?)

But Steve – nope.   _Nada._  No interest in Tony — _that_ way — whatsoever.  

Tony had tentatively dropped some flirting on him – nothing blatant, just some lighter things; looking up from under his eyelashes, leaning his head against Steve’s shoulder…  But Steve had simply smiled, and leaned down so Tony wouldn’t have to look up.  

(Leaning against the shoulder, Tony could acknowledge, had been a terrible idea from the start.  No one finds it sexy when their soulmate goes _through_ them.)

But now – _now –_ Steve was driving Tony absolutely, completely, stark-raving mad.   _(So to speak.)_  Because Steve had finally been persuaded that nowadays, people didn’t have to wear jackets to be decently clad in public…

…and when he’d taken off his jacket, he’d been wearing _suspenders._

_I’ll take, “Things that should not be driving me fucking bonkers,” for 500, Alex!_

It wasn’t that the _suspenders_ were sexy, Tony reassured himself.  After all, exhibit A: Steve Urkel.  Not hot!  It was that they were so _aggressively un-_ _sexy_ that Tony was suffering from the absolutely justifiable compulsion to remove them.  

…yeah, this wasn’t fooling anybody.

So now, Tony smiled hopelessly up at Steve as the other man folded his long, gangling limbs into a beanbag chair.  “Scoot a little closer,” Tony urged him, because he was a glutton for punishment and because, if he couldn’t have a soulmate who wanted him, he was at least confident that he’d gotten a soulmate kind enough not to reject him for his own desires…

Steve smiled his sunbeam smile, and rolled the beanbag chair closer.  He leaned over on his left side, so that he and Tony were inclining their heads together:  conspirators of happiness.  “What are we reading?” Steve asked, voice husky with the semi-whisper one adopts in a library, but also a little nasal with the borough, so that it came out, _Whadda we readin’?_

Tony smiled, hopeless and helpless in the face of how _fucking adorable_ that was.  (Oh, god, he was _so doomed!)_

 _“Captain America,”_ he answered, and watched Steve jump a little.  He held up the volume so Steve could read the front.  “Omnibus edition.  First five hundred pages of the comics, including the little three-panel ones that ran in the newspaper.”  

Steve’s jaw dropped, and he gave this _(adorably!)_ surprised little laugh.  “You like Captain America?” he asked.  He didn't sound like he was judging, exactly, but he _did_ sound like he was probably right on the _verge_ of judging.

Tony found himself turning bright red.  “I mean – I.   He was…”  He broke off, gave an embarrassed chuckle.  “Look…  Captain America was my first _crush,_ okay?  And you can judge me for it if you want, that’s _fine,_ but he was…  He was fair, and he was kind, and he was clever…”  Tony ducked his head and avoided Steve’s eyes; Steve was starting to wear the expression Tony had mentally dubbed, _Most delightful little soulmate in the world._

It always made Tony want to squirm.

“— He was well-read, and a brilliant strategist, but also willing to give a guy a chance, even if no one had any reason to think the guy _getting_ the chance was gonna make it…”  Tony frowned, thinking of the way Bucky had gotten to join Cap in his adventures.

“...And actually,” he finished, “Now that I think of it…  He reminds me a whole lot of _you.”_

Now it was _Steve’s_ turn to blush, and his was even more crimson than Tony’s.  It went all over, spreading from his cheeks to his neck and down below the collar of his old-timey shirt.  (Below his _suspenders,_ and oh, Jesus, Tony was in _so much_ trouble…)

“Probably handsomer than me, though.”  Steve gestured down at his scrawny frame, and Tony scowled.

“Not even!  Or – okay, maybe.”  Steve snorted.  “No, I’m not gonna bullshit you, Steve – sorry, sorry, language, I know – no, I just mean…  Look, Captain America is a superhero, first of all, so don’t bother with comparisons _anyway,_ but even without that, he was in a bunch of _propaganda_ films, of course they had to make him look good.  But I know for a _fact_ that he was wearing makeup in at least half of those films, so even then, don’t bother comparing yourself to him.  And anyway, he might be more conventionally handsome, but I –”  

Tony barely managed to cut himself off before reaching _complete_ humiliation.  

“There are plenty of people who would find you plenty attractive, Steve,” he said instead.  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

Steve looked at him steadily, ash-blond head leaning in towards Tony’s, and it was all Tony could do not to lean forward.

It wasn’t like he could kiss a _ghost,_ anyways.

Even if he _did_ have the balls.

“Thanks,” Steve said sweetly, voice low.

Tony beamed.  

Oh, god, he was in _so much trouble…_

Steve’s breath caught and his eyes widened fractionally, and somehow, Tony just _knew_ Steve had figured out what Tony was thinking.  He pulled away, biting his lip and avoiding Tony’s eyes, and Tony understood, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that Steve was not only aware of Tony’s infatuation, he was also rejecting it.  Like, _completely_ rejecting it.

Like, _totally not interested._

Like, _make the offer, and it’ll be refused._

_Fuck!  Fuckity fuck!_

Really, just... god damnit.

Well, it wasn’t a _complete_ surprise, really...  

“So let’s read these comics,” Steve said, flushing.  

He wasn’t meeting Tony’s eyes at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos feel like a smile; comments feel like a hug!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All glory to Valmasy for the beta; I've added a fair bit between the beta-read and posting, so while any mistakes would be mine *anyway*, it's extra true for this chapter. 
> 
> I'll also mention that this is where my lack of knowledge of the comics really starts to shine through. I had a deuce of a time with the timeline for this fic, and Tony's romantic exploits are not easy to keep track of. So I borrowed some from comics, and made up a lot more. Most of the ones I made up have a source somewhere, so if you think something is a reference, it probably is, and you should drop me a line telling me whether you think I'm clever or ridiculous or what have you. Please also feel free to drop me a line if I've mucked up the comics canon too badly, but, uh... I worked really hard to get as close as I could, so please be nice about it? Thank you in advance!
> 
> Lastly, **TRIGGER WARNINGS** for this chapter: physical abuse of a minor. Sexual activity by a minor above the age of consent.

“ — So now they’re trying to impeach him, and it’s looking like it’s actually going to happen.”  Tony swung his legs over the side of the children’s bookcase, which was only three feet high, and smiled impishly down at Steve, who was leaning against it.  “There’s a word for this kind of situation, but I don’t think you’d like it.  Starts with  _ cluster —”  _

“That’s enough.”  Steve tilted his head and looked at Tony reprovingly; Tony grinned back, completely failing to be chastened.  

“And all because of some sex scandal.”  He made a face.  “I don’t know he couldn’t just, you know,  _ keep it in his pants.” _

Steve hummed.  “I’ve seen it before,” he commented.  “Mostly from folks like generals or the like.  A lot of powerful men got that way by — well, by essentially being more manly than all the other guys in the room.”

“You mean like that  _ super annoying  _ thing where guys squeeze the hell out of your hand on meeting you?”

“Yeah, exactly.”  Steve picked up a nearby  _ Frog and Toad  _ book and poked Tony with it.  “Or by doing something they know their boss won’t like, but which isn’t against the rules enough to punish.”

“How does  _ that  _ work?”  It sounded like a whole lot of effort for nothing, honestly.  Why not just be smarter than everyone else and go around?  Tony kicked his feet again, and then flopped down so that he was staring up at the ceiling.  

“Well, by proving you’ve got the hutzpah to do it, you establish yourself as the, uh...  _ more dominant  _ personality.  And by doing it with something they can’t punish you for, you avoid trouble.”

Steve’s voice sounded off somehow as he said it — furtive, almost — and when Tony sat back up again, Steve seemed to be absorbed in studying the art of  _ Frog and Toad.   _ Which, not that there was anything wrong with that, but Tony wasn’t fooled in the slightest.  “So how many times have you pulled this trick, exactly?” he asked, starting to grin, and watched the flush rise along the back of Steve’s neck.

“Oh...”  Steve tilted his head back, and smiled angelically up at Tony.  “Lost count.”  

Tony laughed and went back to his elbows. “So you, too, have taken part in the dick-measuring contests?”

_ “Tony.” _

“Well, that’s what they are!  Don’t tell me they’re not, that’s exactly what you’re describing!”

“Yeah, alright.”  Steve admitted grudgingly.  “I may’ve taken part in  _ and won  _ my share of the dick-measuring contests.  Not, uh... Not literally, though.  Anyway, that’s what it is, what you’re describing.  Powerful man, who’s gotten pretty far, always surrounded by pretty ladies?  Gets him social capital if he sleeps with them,  _ and  _ he’s probably pretty aggressive in the first place, so he’s gonna put out a lot of overtures.  A lot of women find that sort of thing very attractive, and a different lot are too afraid to turning him down.  It’s a bad mix.”

Tony kicked the bookshelf again, thinking about it.  “Seems unfair,” he decided eventually.  “To those ladies, I mean — who,  _ of course,  _ are getting dragged through the mud for this.”

Steve made an unhappy sound.  “The world isn’t fair to ladies, that’s for sure,” he agreed, and they both went quiet again at the truth of that.

After a moment, Steve poked him with the book again.  “Speaking of ladies,” he said, “You seeing anyone?”  

His accent was thicker again:   _ speakin’ of ladies.   _ Tony frowned and hopped off the bookcase, coming around to sit tailor-style in front of Steve.  “Why would I be seeing anyone?” he asked.  “I have a soulmate, remember?  I mean, I would  _ think  _ you would remember...  Seems to me, it’s pretty relevant to you...”

Steve shook his head, stubbornness in the set of his shoulders.  “Nah, I don’t count — ”

“Well, I’d sure like to know why not — !”

“ — Because I’m  _ dead,  _ Tony!  You can’t — and anyway — it’s not—”  Steve broke off, and his eyebrows moved from  _ pained  _ to  _ concerned.  _  “Even if you were old enough to be talking about that kind of— that kind of permanence— and assuming you were interested in me romantically, which is a big assumption; you’re pretty amazing and I don’t really see any reason for you to settle— but even  _ with  _ all that, there’s no way to make it work!  I’m  _ dead!”   _

Tony ducked his head and kept eye contact when Steve tried to look away.   _“Even with all that—”_ he parodied, furious.  “Even  _ with all that,  _ Steve...  Just because I can’t touch you, doesn’t mean— I wouldn’t let a little thing like— like us being— separate, us being not-touching, keep us apart.  Just because—”  

His breath hitched in his throat, and he stopped talking before any untoward sound could make its way out, but Steve heard it anyway, it seemed like.  His face crumpled.  “I know that,” he said unhappily.  “I know you wouldn’t.  But, look...”  

He glanced around, and grabbed one of the little round cushions colored like Captain America’s shield that he and Tony both thought were great.  He held it out in both hands, and after a moment, Tony sulkily put his own right hand on top of it.  Steve folded up the cushion so that Tony’s hand was squeezed on both sides by it, holding it tight.  

It was  _ almost _ like having his hand held.  

Kind of, anyway.

They both breathed for a second, caught in the sensation of coming so close to touching the other.  It occurred to Tony, miserably, that he might even actually be lying:  if almost-touching Steve was this good, there was no way he could just walk away from the real thing, and that was...

_ Damn it!   _

“I know you wanna be loyal,” Steve said.  His voice was quiet, but not whispering; it was the kind of quiet like a steady spring rain, the kind that was no less powerful for the lack of volume, and it was threaded through with a kind of conviction.  “But Tony, you  _ can’t.   _ You’ve gotta know that.”

Okay.

Truth time.

He actually...  He _did_ know it, yeah... even though he’d spent an awful lot of time trying not to.  

“I don’t think I can do this,” Tony whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.  His blue eyes were wide and distressed, even his hair seeming miserable as it hung in his eyes.  “I’m so sorry, Tony.  But you’re not gonna just  _ give up,  _ right?  You can’t.”

Tony bit his lip, staring at Steve.  The pressure around his hand increased — Steve was squeezing harder.  

“You’ve gotta get out there, Tony.  Try to meet someone — someone you can...  Uh.”  Steve hesitated, fumbling over words, and a small, eye-rolling part of Tony’s brain tried very hard not to find it adorable.  “Maybe someday you could...  If you meet someone you love...  Look, it’s pretty obvious we’ve gotta be platonics, right?”

Tony felt his whole face caving in, like an underdone cake collapsing under the pressure of its own icing.  “Sure,” he said, shoulders hunching.  “Obvious.”  

Steve made a small, distressed noise.  

“It’s fine, Steve.”  Tony pasted on a smile and resolved to hold his breath.  If he held his breath, his heart would speed up, and soon he would wake up.  “I understand.  I’ll try.”

His lips felt dry around the smile, and Steve was crushing his hand in the pillow with more strength than Tony would have thought he had in his wiry arms.  

 

* * *

 

So Tony tried.  

He went on a date with Roseanne Marbache, taking her to see The Matrix, which, okay, was  _ much  _ better than he’d expected, a fact that Roseanne seemed  _ perennially incapable of recognizing,  _ and she wasn’t even  _ interested  _ in the ethical considerations of artificial intelligence, which Tony did  _ try  _ to use to start a thoughtful conversation, and at the end of the date she got a cab home and told her not to call him, and he didn’t have a  _ clue  _ what he’d done wrong.

Steve laughed himself into a fit of the hiccoughs when Tony told him about it.  

“I don’t think she was interested in the— the— the  _ ethical considerations  _ of  _ artificial intelligence,”  _ he wheezed, blue eyes lit up with amusement.

_ “You  _ would’ve liked it,” Tony sulked.

Steve rolled his eyes a little, but he also blushed and stopped laughing.  “I probably woulda, yeah.”  His voice was gentle as he suggested, “Maybe try a more thoughtful girl, next time?”

Tony bit his lip and watched Steve’s long fingers reach for the pencils and scrap paper they kept near the card catalog.  Steve had a habit of drawing little cartoons on them for Tony, sly little things poking gentle fun at both of them.  

“More thoughtful,” Tony repeated obediently.  “Yeah, sure.”

 

* * *

 

Meredith McCall was definitely more thoughtful than Roseanne had been.  She watched him with wide blue eyes as he ordered food for them at the nice French restaurant in Boston.  “I was surprised you wanted to come out this late,” he commented, spearing the miniscule sprig of asparagus that was surrounded by three constellation-like points of glaze.  

She smiled serenely.  “Well, we all have our own little points of rebellion against our parents, don’t we?  I’m not sure what yours is, but mine is definitely seeing you.”  She toasted him with a glass of wine they were both too young to have ordered, and Tony felt a sensation like cold water drip down the back of his neck.

“Our parents?  Why, what do they have to do with this?”

She had very well-manicured eyebrows, and both of them were arched sharply up.  “You know our fathers are deadly rivals, right?  My father’s going to have a coronary when he finds out where I was tonight.  Personally, I’m hoping to get a good picture of it.”  

She had dimples, Tony noticed distantly.

 

* * *

 

“So then she told me that her soulmate is a vegan lesbian stonemason from Vermont, and that as soon as she gets a chance, she’s running away from home.  Seeing me was just one more way to kill time and piss — sorry,  _ tick —  _ her father off.  And that was it,” he reported glumly to Steve.  “The next time I called, her father — who, by the way, is  _ not awesome —  _ read me the riot act and told me I was never going to see her again.”  He grimaced, and tossed Steve the Cap pillow.  “Which I’m probably not, actually, because Dad’s sending me to Europe for the summer.”

Steve smiled.  It looked a little forced.  “That sounds lovely,” he said, “Europe, I mean.  See some art for me, would you?”

He bopped Tony on the head with the pillow, and Tony closed his eyes to savor the affectionate moment.

 

* * *

 

He actually did go see some art for Steve, reporting back about statues and paintings and astonishingly intricate jewelry.  He asked Steve about his favorite, thinking it was either going to be a [Pietà](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_\(Michelangelo\)) or something classical like the [School of Athens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens) , but Steve lit up and gushed about the thematic elements of the tale of [Judith and Holofernes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_beheading_Holofernes), instead.  Tony was looking at a particularly gruesome version of the story when he met Carolyn.

Carolyn was English, fair-skinned, with perfect peaches in her cheeks and feathered brown hair.  She also had a wickedly droll sense of humor, and Tony was pretty disappointed to learn a week later that she had a soulmate, Ned, waiting for her in Sainsbury.

“He’s older,” she shrugged, running her foot up Tony’s calf from where she sat next to him on her overstuffed sofa.  A glass of prosecco sparkled in her far hand.  “He wants me to play around a bit before I come find him.”  She leaned in and ran her tongue around the shell of his ear, chuckling when he jumped.  “Sow my wild oats,” she murmured, and then she was leaning in even more, close enough to press her breasts against him, and Tony wasn’t dumb enough to try to keep talking about it.

 

* * *

 

There were more.

 

* * *

 

Greta was from Northern Italy, logical and philosophical, and had a dour sort of look, with thick, straight hair dyed severely black.  She was more interested in drinking his wine and smoking cigarettes with him than she was in the kisses he tried to steal, which was a damned shame, because she was down-to-earth and plainspoken in a way which reminded him of no one so much as Steve.  He tried and tried to figure out what he was doing wrong with her, but he never did puzzle it out; regardless, there wasn’t a “spark”, and while he was disappointed to leave Greta behind, he found himself slightly relieved, as well.

 

* * *

 

Pierre was French, redheaded and lighthearted.  His father owned a vineyard in the country near Dijon, would Tony like to come down and visit?

Tony would, actually.

So they strolled through the vines in the afternoon, and then lingered in bed for the rest of the night.  Pierre taught Tony about wine, far more than his father or mother had, and when Tony saw the gleaming row of sleek cars parked in the garage, he tried to tell Pierre about the vagaries of their engines.  Pierre wasn’t interested:  “We have someone who takes care of that for us, darling.”  He waved his cigarette lazily.  

Tony told Steve about Pierre, and watched his soulmate’s hands clench on a biography of M. C. Escher.  He smiled tightly to himself and went back to aggressively reading his own biography (John McAdam, as it happened.)  

He had his feet tucked carefully under his own knees, and didn’t have his legs tangled up with Steve’s at all, when Steve put Escher down abruptly.  “When’s the last time you were excited about something?” Steve asked.

“What?”

Steve gave him a  _ no bullshit, please _ , look, except that Steve would probably have said  _ no nonsense, _ instead.  “You just told me how much fun this guy is, how pretty he is, how rich he is, and all that, but you haven’t said a word about anything  _ interesting.”   _

Tony blinked, and put down his own book with a muted, but oddly significant,  _ thud. _  “I mean, the sex is pretty interesting.”  He crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Steve informed him primly, his neck turning a miserable red.  “I mean  _ actually interesting.   _ I  _ know  _ you, Tony.  You gotta have a challenge.”

Tony hugged himself tighter and scowled.  “Sometimes it’s nice to just be  _ happy,  _ Steve!”

“Fine, then!  Alright, alright; fine.  You’re right, I shouldn’t’ve said anything.”  Steve held up his hands like he was showing he was unarmed, and Tony, cautiously, picked back up his book.

It  _ was  _ nice to just be happy, for a while.

He moved on less than a month later, though.  Steve had been right:  He was bored.

 

* * *

 

Liz was Scandinavian, dark and edgy.  They met online in a hacking forum, then in real life to break into a government building.  They did not tell each other what they were doing there (Tony was fixing a Stark prototype that had been sold to the government before a final flaw was corrected; he had no idea what her purposes were, and frankly just _hoped_ they were as altruistic as his), but they made an excellent pair, leapfrogging each other to bypass alarms and guards.  It was exhilarating, perilously close to being a team, and the feel of it...

...Well.  

It felt...   _ right.   _

When he left the facility, he saw her ahead of him, and called out to her by her online pseud before running to catch up.  She slammed him against a wall, put a knife to his throat, and sucked kisses onto his mouth like it was a new form of attack.  He brought her back to his hotel room, letting her grab him by the head and press him up into her for over an hour as she came, and came, and came, and _came..._   

When he woke up, she was gone, and there was no trace of her in any of the familiar forums and message boards.

 

* * *

 

Debbie Lynn Dalton, back in the states, was blonde and Southern and breathless, and wielded all three of those traits like rapiers.  Tony watched her use her wits, pink lipstick, and made-up-sounding colloquialisms to skewer four men in a row before he went up to her, put his hands carefully behind his back, and leaned in close.  “If I promise not to lay a hand on you and to bring flowers next time, will you let me talk to you for more than five minutes?” he asked.

She smiled.

Debbie, he discovered, was amazing.  She didn’t have a soulmate— had once, in private, wondered out loud if she even had a soul— and was ruthless when it came to getting what she wanted.  But she was genuinely warm-hearted with animals, including strays— she had a menagerie that would have impressed Catwoman, except that, unlike Catwoman, the menagerie was real— and explained, in short, small words for him, that all she wanted was a husband who was rich, wouldn’t cheat, would worship the ground she walked on, and could give her children.  “Is that you?” she asked.  “Because it seems to me like it could be.”

 

* * *

 

Steve’s eyebrows shot towards his forehead.  “And could it?  What did you say?”  He sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, and looked very intently focused on the book in front of him.

Tony shrugged, and leaned further into the  atlas  sandwiched between their sides.  “I told her the same thing I’ll tell you:  I don’t know.”  

 

* * *

 

The answer, it turned out, was  _ no.   _ Tony would have preferred to have found out first, but he didn’t.  He also would have preferred to have found out in private, and not in the middle of Mrs. Pryor’s New Years party, but he didn’t get that, either.

As far as he was aware, the trouble started when Debbie came straight up to him and splashed her drink in his face.  “You son of a  _ bitch,”  _ she snarled, and slapped him.  It was so dramatic that he almost would have suspected it of being a fake of some kind, except that this was Debbie:  the only fake was that, while she was doubtless genuinely upset, she was going to play up the  _ extent  _ of the thing to make him suffer.

He had seen her make men suffer, before.  This was about to be really,  _ really  _ bad.

He fished a napkin off of a nearby table and wiped ruefully at his face.   _ Note to self,  _ he thought,  _ maybe don’t date the ruthless ones.  Even if you’re turned on by the ruthlessness...  Maybe  _ especially  _ if you’re turned on by the ruthlessness! _

Out loud, he just said, “Can I ask what I did?”

Another, lesser woman would have gone for the manipulative  _ Like you don’t know  _ line.  

Not Debbie.

“You dated me for  _ four fucking months  _ and never thought to mention you had a  _ god-damned soulmate,  _ you shifty-bellied  _ snake."  _  Her voice was definitely pitched to carry; if she didn't wind up marrying well, she had a brilliant career in theater ahead of her. __ "I had to find out from a friend who saw you canoodling with him in the Dreamscape — and for a double-dip frozen-yogurt FUBAR with sprinkles, I had to find out your soulmate was a  _ him  _ from her, too!  Slither off and  _ die.” _

And then, before he had time to react, she slapped him again and stormed off.

There was dead silence in the room for a second, and then everyone around him started pretending they hadn’t been watching Tony’s gender-flipped  _ Punch and Judy  _ spectacular.

Tony closed his eyes...

...breathed in...

...and left the party immediately.

 

* * *

 

Apparently, Tony had sounded pretty awful on the phone, because Jarvis himself was behind the wheel of the dark sedan when it pulled up.  Tony dived through the drizzle, opting for the front seat, and Jarvis pulled away even before he’d gotten the seat-belt to click into place.

They didn’t talk until they’d gotten on the highway, the lights of the city zooming past in sickly green-yellow blurs.  Once he had successfully merged into traffic, though, Jarvis asked, “Is it true?  Have you met your soulmate?”  His voice was neutral and light; he managed to make it sound not at all like a disaster.

Tony slouched in his seat, anyway.  “Not face to face.”  He looked out the window again, watching the semi they were keeping pace with.  The wall of the truck featured a pepto-bismol pink hippopotamus, and it seemed to be advertising some sort of party planners.  It seemed like an odd choice, linking hippos with parties, but then, the hippo looked pretty okay with it.

“Naturally not, sir.  I should clarify that I expect to be introduced promptly once that happy event has occurred.”  Jarvis managed to pull of offended dignity in the dancing half-lights of the freeway.

Tony snorted.  “Sure, Jarvis,” he said.  “I ever meet him, you’ll be the first to know.”  

_Mistake,_ he realized immediately.  He could feel the weight of Jarvis’ regard on the back of his neck, and found himself tensed against it.  

“Have you any reason to think you  _ won’t  _ be meeting him face to face?”

“Well, that’s not how it works, is it?” Tony blocked instinctively, throwing up words like forearm to fend off the blow.  “You have a Dreamscape, you’ve got a soulmate; you have a soulmate, you’re guaranteed to meet the soulmate.  That’s part of what having a soulmate  _ means.”  _

“And yet your own words imply that you doubt the applicability of that rule in your case,” countered Jarvis calmly.  Really, Tony should have known; he should have seen it coming.  Jarvis had been dealing with his bullshit for too long to be put off by flippant answers based on generalities.

Tony swallowed.  Really, there was only one thing left to do here:  open up.  It was about the last thing he  _ wanted  _ to do, but on the other hand, it  _ was  _ Jarvis.  If anyone was safe...

He took a breath.

“He’s a ghost,” he said; it came out all in a bunch, with a bleating noise almost like a sheep. He squinched his eyes closed in embarrassment for a second.

They passed a slow-moving convertible in the left lane, which — they were in a  _ convertible,  _ why were those people driving so slowly?! _  Have some respect for the car, Jesus Christ! _  — and Tony propped one foot up on the dash, right above the glove compartment.

“I beg your pardon?” Jarvis asked in a careful voice.

So Tony found himself spilling the whole story, from meeting Steve, to learning he was a ghost — “He died on a mission in  _ World War II,  _ Jarvis; even if he were just in a coma or something, he’d still be too old to...  _ you know.”  _ — to developing his crush on the slow-smiling, fair-minded, generous-hearted soldier.  “Not that he’s even interested in me that way.  I think it’s a forties thing, because every time I try to make a move on him, he looks horrified and changes the subject.”

“Indeed?  And how many times has this happened?”

Tony made a face at the dashboard.

“Was it once?  Twice?  A dozen, or two dozen times?”  

“Not a dozen,” he answered.  “Maybe... four?  Five?”  He made another, more depressed face.  “Often enough that I learned to stop trying.  I haven’t hit on him in probably, oh... a year?  Maybe a little more?”

Jarvis braked lightly, enabling the sedan to pull in behind the Con-Way truck for their exit.  “And if I may ask, how old is this soldier of yours?  Or,” he amended, hitting the flasher, “I suppose, how old does he  _ appear  _ to be?”

Tony shrugged.  He should probably have asked Steve that, he realized guiltily.  It seemed like something normal people would care about.  “Idunno.  Young — not my-age-young, but not creepy-old, either.  Twenty-five, maybe?  Plus or minus... five years, we’ll call it?”  

Jarvis sent him a startled look.  “Plus or minus  _ five?”   _

“I’m not that great at estimating ages, okay?”  He crossed his arms.  “And besides, half the clues you use for that are contextual based on the era.  If someone does their hair like they just stepped out of the eighties, they’re probably not my age.  Stuff like that.”

“An excellent point, sir,” Jarvis agreed, smiling faintly.  “And so your soulmate could be any age, from twenty to thirty.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“And you yourself are nearly eighteen.”

“I know what you’re doing, Jarvis.”  Tony could feel his lower lip sticking out in a pout, and pulled it back in.  He shoved a hand through his hair and wondered absentmindedly if he could grow a convincing moustache, and, if he did, whether it would mean he  _ didn’t have to have this conversation any more!  _  “He isn’t just holding himself off out of respect for my youth, or anything, okay?  He just  _ doesn’t want me.   _ Which is  _ fine,  _ it just means he’s not a fair—”  

He stopped, and took a minute.

He tried again.  “It just means that he’s normal, Jarvis.  I mean, I know I’m... different... and that’s — that’s one thing, but  _ he’s—  _  He’s  _ so good,  _ J, I can’t even  _ tell  _ you!  And if that means he’s not interested in me, then that’s  _ okay.   _ He doesn’t have to be.”  Jarvis pulled the car around the back entrance with a liquidy-smooth turn, and Tony felt his stomach churn at being so close to home.   _Safety, such as it is._

“I hope you don’t think I would presume to contradict you on such a personal matter, sir.  But I  _ will  _ caution you that a man’s desires may change over time, and, particularly as a young person blossoms and grows, they may become more attractive to their soulmate.”

“Right.”  Jarvis pulled the car to a stop, and Tony couldn’t have his seatbelt off and his feet out the door fast enough.  “He’s waiting for me to  _ bloom.   _ Got it.  Hey, are you coming to my  _ thesis defense  _ this spring?”  He shot Jarvis a pointed look over the hood of the car, but the old man just smiled serenely as he took his time straightening.  

“I did intend to, sir, assuming your father permits it.”  

Tony wanted to keep sulking, but at that, he couldn’t help but grin at Jarvis, instead.  “Thanks for the ride, Jarvis.”

“I assure you, sir, it was my pleasure.”  Jarvis had his keys out and was opening the door.  “Now, if there is any justice in the world, your father will have gone to his well-earned rest for the night.   _ Do  _ try to avoid disturbing him?”  His upturned voice at the end made it into a question, and Tony answered accordingly, grinning.

“Yes, Jarvis,” he whispered conspiratorially, then went on, his mood successfully lightened.  “Hey, did you see that schematic I drew up for the high-density muon beam projector?  I mean, I know I can’t start prototype development until after I graduate, but —”

The two men entered the hallway together, and then both stopped abruptly.  Tony’s mouth went suddenly dry.

Howard Stark was standing at the other end of the hall, velvet dressing robe wrapped over satin pajamas bearing a self-indulgent pattern.  His arms were folded across his chest.  

Apparently, Mrs. Pryor — or someone, anyway — had called him.

“Thank you, Jarvis,” he said.  “I believe I can handle the situation from here.”  

Jarvis looked at Tony, and then, when Tony didn’t meet his eye, back at Howard.  His only option being to accept the dismissal, he nodded and retreated back to his rooms.

Tony bit his lip.  “Dad,” he started, “I can explain—”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also a HUUUGE thank you to all those who commented/kudos'd - HOLY CATS I was not anticipating that level of response! I am feeling so much love, y'all; it's really, really amazing. Free hugs to all who want them, and god bless you!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy, who has put up with SO MANY questions during the course of beta-ing this nonsense.

There weren't going to be any more girlfriends.  

Word got around quickly that he had a soulmate — there was even a gossipy blurb about it in the  _ National Enquirer  _ — and suddenly no one was looking at him as a serious romantic possibility.  One of them, Ellie Wooster, was even kind enough to put it into words for him:  “Tony, why would I date you when I  _ know  _ it's going nowhere?  You're really nice, but I'm not going to be young and beautiful forever.  Wasting that time on a dead end...  It's not respecting myself.”

So, no:  no more girlfriends.

The thing that totally blew his mind, though, was that there were still  _ plenty  _ of people—men  _ and  _ women — who were still willing to proposition him.  

Tony got totally the wrong impression, the first time it happened:  Clarissa Valmont invited him over, and Tony, flattered that a woman five years older than he was would be interested in him, showed up prepared to take her out.

She was not interested in going out.

And it wasn't like he was going to tell her  _ no:  _ she was beautiful, older, and, frankly, pretty determined.  By the time it occurred to Tony how things were going to go, she already had her hand wrapped around him and her lips on his neck.  

Afterwards, she got up and poured them each a glass of wine, a strong red with smoky notes, and offered him a cigarette before lighting up herself.  “Were you really going to take me to a movie?” she asked, amused.

“Well,  that or the symphony.  I had backup plans.”  He sipped his wine — there was some sort of cinnamon taste,  it was really quite good — and watched her hair.  It was blond in neutral lighting, a nice honey-wheat color, but with her leaning against the hallway window in a negligee, it appeared strangely two-toned, instead:  red-gold from the hall light on one side, blue-green tinted from the street on the other.  

She had a nice smile.  “Hopefully, this was a little bit better than the symphony,” she teased.

Tony felt  _ awful.   _ He was standing in the hallway between her kitchen and her living room in only his underwear and his now-wrinkled black slacks, bare-footed and -chested, holding a glass he wasn't technically old enough to drink out of.  He had expected— he really had — that they would have made it at least to the second date before everything went all wrong.  

He didn't think there was going to  _ be  _ a second date, now.

“It was great,” he reassured her, smile pulling across his face like a marionette on strings.

He headed out half an hour later, Jarvis picking him up in a sleek, low Jaguar that was almost better than the sex.  He didn’t start shaking until he was safe in the back seat.

His life stretched before him, another fifty or so years of this:  shabby hook-ups with older women — or rather, at first older, but at some point they would start to all be younger, instead— and men, nothing permanent, nothing emotionally involving.  Just... better than the symphony, he guessed.

“Jarvis, pull over,” he ordered, his mouth watering and throat burning.  

The car pulled to the side of the road.  He leaned out the door and vomited expensive Argentinian red all over the side of the freeway.

 

* * *

 

After that, Tony avoided the Dreamscape, mostly by avoiding dreams in general, and by avoiding sleep, even more in general.  It didn't work entirely, of course  — no one could avoid the Dreamscape forever, and there were plenty of historical accounts of people who had tried, to prove it — but instead of visiting an average of three times a week, he managed to cut it back to one.  Even when he was there, he found himself withdrawn and quiet, and while Steve was clearly hurt by it, he was also willing to give Tony the room he needed.

It wasn't that he didn’t  _ like  _ Steve — of  _ course  _ he liked Steve, he  _ loved  _ Steve — it was just...

...hard.

To see him.  

And to know he couldn't touch.

And to know that he wanted to. 

Honestly, it was probably going to get Tony into trouble, if he wasn’t careful. 

 

* * *

 

Clarissa Valmont turned into Lizzie Callahan, who turned into Piers Buehler, who turned into Ken, who turned into Maggie, who turned into...

Most of them weren’t interested in a second round.

The ones who were, Tony politely turned down.

 

* * *

 

Jarvis  _ hated  _ it.  He was too civil to say it— and, to be honest, too aware of how Tony would have reacted to open censure from him — but Tony was aware of the old man’s feelings on the topic, regardless.  It was there in the quiet reserve when picking him up from these little overnight trips, in the pointed way Jarvis would ask after Steve the next morning.  

(Sex, for whatever reason, almost always worked to keep him out of the Dreamscape.  On the few occasions it  _ didn’t  _ work, Tony found himself staying in the house— the dream-version of the Mansion.  It was always a good time to read one of the trashy romances his mother kept in her study.) 

 

* * *

 

Howard hated it, too; Tony was never sure whether or not that was one of the reasons he did it.  

In the end, it didn’t matter.

 

* * *

 

Steve was reading “The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper” when a shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see Winnie glaring down at him with crossed arms.  “What?” he blurted, then winced and tried to make it better.  “Is there something wrong?”  There, that was better; at least it was  _ somewhat  _ civilized.

Winnie snorted.  “I’ll say there is.  Have you seen your beau lately?”

“He’s not my— I mean.”  Steve blushed, and tried again.  “He, uh...  He hasn’t been coming around, much.”  He set his book in his lap, giving Winnie his full attention.  “I think he’s mad that— you know.”

She gave him a look so unimpressed it was pretty much embossed.  “No,” she said.  “I don’t know.”

He winced.  “I mean— he, uh...  Well, you know, I’m a ghost.”  He checked to make sure she was following what he was saying as he unfolded his legs— which still looked almost spider-like to him, long and skeletal, despite the decades he’d had in the Dreamscape to get used to the appearance of his pre-serum form— and stood.  

Winnie nodded patiently.  Or, well, actually, not that patiently, but pretty nicely considering the number of idiots she dealt with on a daily basis.

Steve was usually proud of  _ not  _ numbering among them.

“Well, since I’m a ghost, we can’t...  I mean, not that he would  _ want  _ to, surely... but I mean—”  Steve cut himself off, and coughed.  “I’m pretty sure at this point I’m fairly firmly in the non-beau category.”  He suppressed the flare of pain from that old injury, and manfully met Winnie’s eyes.

Winnie gave him a look usually reserved for those who asked to use the in-Dreamscape fax machine or small, incontinent dogs.  “Oh my god, these  _ idiots,”  _ she muttered, then spoke again, this time loudly enough that he knew he was intended to hear it.  “Steven.  When was the last time you saw him?”

Steve thought about it, and shrugged.  “Probably about a week?”  Time flowed oddly for him, even beyond the normal weirdness of the Dreamscape; since he never woke, he judged time by when he saw certain people, but even so, he had still developed a sense for it.  He was guessing, but his guess was probably pretty accurate.

Winnie took up his paperback and smacked him upside the head with it.

“Ow!”

“Go find him!  Go find him right now!”

_ “Ow!  _  I’m going!  Winnie, what...?!”

Steve planted his back foot, shifted his weight, and pivoted, grabbing the book out of Winnie’s hand.  “I’m going, alright?  But what’s the big deal, anyway...?”

She rolled her eyes and turned away, moving back towards the circulation desk.  She called her answer to him over her shoulder, giving him room to hear her without containing his reaction— a courtesy, given the emotional weight of it.  “Howard and Maria Stark just died.”

 

* * *

 

The thing was, there was only one place Tony could really  _ be:   _ in his house.  And, while Steve (and everybody else) knew exactly where that was, he had never actually been invited  _ in. _

It occurred to him, as he crossed 71st Street and approached the  _ intimidatingly  _ large mansion, that if he were  _ caught  _ doing this, he could be arrested and tried.  Or, well...  If he were alive, he could, anyway...

Hopefully, Tony wouldn’t be angry.

Steve wasn’t sure about that, actually.  Tony had been... strange, lately.  Angry  _ in general,  _ in a way Steve couldn’t precisely put his finger on.  It wasn’t the same as one of their fights— they’d had a couple, not over anything too serious— where Tony would be snippy for the rest of the night and then fine the next time he came in.  Tony forgave easily, Steve had noticed.  No, this was deeper, more pervasive.  Tony was withdrawing, introducing a level of formality that left Steve disappointed and hurt, and he couldn’t see  _ why—  _

Not that it mattered, right now, he reminded himself.  What mattered now was finding Tony and making sure he was okay, and... 

...and it was possible that that was going to be more difficult than anticipated, considering the fact that this place was  _ enormous!   _ “How many rooms does a fella need?” Steve asked aloud.

Figuring that the top was the best place to start, he headed up the stairs, but he wasn’t even to the top floor when he heard him.  

(It wasn’t a loud sound, and, not for the first time, Steve wondered about the Dreamscape— he was almost certain he wouldn’t have heard that without the enhanced senses he had died in possession of, the same ones he did not currently have...  So how did he hear as well as if he  _ did  _ have them?)

Cautiously, Steve stepped out of the stairwell and edged down the hall.  “Tony...?”

Tony had said the house was empty here, right?

“Tony, is that you?”

With a snuffle and a cough, one of the anonymous doors lining the hallway like some sort of fever dream, or that scene in  _ Dawn Treader  _ where Lucy meets the magician, distinguished itself by creaking open. Tony’s dark, tousled head peeked out.  “...Steve?”  

Steve tried not to think about how much incredulity was in Tony’s voice.  “Hey.  I’m here.  Are you...?”

But it was obvious that Tony was not, actually, all right.

“I’m fine,” Tony said, and sniffed hard enough that even Steve, fifteen feet away, could hear the snot move.  

“Sure you are,” Steve agreed.  “I was, too, when my folks died.” 

Tony jerked.

Steve sighed, and tilted his head at the door Tony was half-hiding behind.  “Look, do you have something in there I can hug you with, or not?”

Tentatively, Tony smiled; it was pretty watery and sick, but a smile nevertheless, and Steve was just happy to see it.  He backed through the door, but pushed it further open to make it clear that Steve was welcome to come in, and when Steve had crossed the distance and entered, Tony was turning back towards him with what looked like an enormous crocheted, Captain America-themed, afghan held out in both hands.

It looked like a peace offering.

Steve took it.

Somehow, they didn’t even have to talk about it.  They just both sat, side-by-side, on the bed, and Steve wrapped first the afghan, and then his arms, around Tony’s shoulders.  Tony’s breathing hitched, and his posture hunched, and he turned into Steve’s chest, sobbing all over again.

A guy couldn’t cry forever, though, and eventually, his shaking quieted down.  

“Thanks,” he said thickly, pushing a little bit at Steve’s chest.

Steve tightened his arms, toothpick thin but stronger than he looked, like he could hold Tony safe against the world.  “Any time,” he promised.

Tony wobbled at that, but managed to pull it back.  “I’ll take you up on it,” he warned, before his eyes flicked to the side like he’d heard a noise.  He faced Steve again, eyes widening in intensity.  “I’m gonna wake up soon,” he said, and then stopped, not-quite-managing to get the rest of it out.

That was okay; Steve heard it, anyway.  “I’ll be here,” he promised.  “When you get back in, I mean.  However long it takes.  I’ll be here.”

Because what else could he  _ do? _

Grief was the hardest burden to share, even among the living.  Which Steve  _ wasn’t! _

Tony flickered a smile at him before fading out.  “I won’t be too long; they make tranqs, you know?  And the funeral’s not ‘til Thursday.  I’ve got time enough to come back.” 

Steve nodded.

Tony looked at him miserably, and tried— and failed— to smile.  “Thanks,” he repeated.

Then the afghan collapsed, and Tony was gone.

“Any time,” Steve told the empty room, chest aching.

 

* * *

 

In the whole time since crashing the plane, Steve had always stayed either in or close to the library; any occasional trips out were short, and he always came back.  He did “nap,” because unceasing existence in the Dreamscape, it turned out, made time do weird things— for one thing, the Dreamscape sky was almost always sunny, even at what would have objectively been nighttime— but this, too, he did in the library.  He’d never _tried_ to sleep anywhere else, which is why this was the first time Steve had noticed that no matter where he "fell asleep," he would “wake up” near the library steps.

Not that it mattered now, though— now, all that was important was getting over to the Mansion before Tony showed up and found him gone.  He pounded across 71st Street— thankfully devoid of traffic— and through the ornate doors of the mansion.  “Tony!” he shouted, pelting through the halls to the stairs.  “Tonyyy!”  

He emerged from the stairwell and came to a halt so fast his feet did a little short-step dance, trying to slow down.  Tony was standing, stock still, back towards Steve, smack in the middle of that long, especially-dreamlike hallway that had housed his bedroom.  

Steve panted and swallowed.  “Tony?” he asked.

Tony jumped about a foot and a half, straight up, pirouetting in midair and coming down facing Steve.  He bobbled the landing, though, tripped, and fell on his butt, arms and legs akimbo.   _ “Steve?!”   _

Steve smiled tremulously, and wondered just how much time he’d spaced out on.  “Yes?” he asked.  “Were you— did you not want me here?”  

Tony’s jaw dropped slightly, and he laughed, incredulous.  “Of course I want you here!  I just—”  He broke off and fumbled to his feet, initially stretching out his hand for an assist up before remembering why that was a not-terribly-feasible idea.  “I’m not used to people actually showing up in this house,” he said, pushing off of a wall.  “Come on, let’s go find the Cap-ghan.”

Steve snorted, surprised into laughter, and followed.

 

* * *

 

They found more than just the one blanket, of course.  Tony was the one who had the idea of rolling them both up like cigarettes in all the blankets and sheets of the bed, and then tumbling in next to each other.  It was...

It was really nice, actually. 

Steve smiled through his aching heart and wriggled an arm free to slip around the Tony-roll, pulling him closer until their breaths mingled against the pillow.  Tony didn’t say anything, though, and for a long time, neither did Steve.  It was enough, he thought in a mental tone vaguely like objection.  It was  _ enough  _ to just be here, be together, lying quietly side by side— different from when they had had books sandwiched between them; he could feel softness of another human body, could feel the  _ warmth,  _ and oh, god, it felt good to be warm again for once.  He hadn’t realized how cold he always was until something made the chill retreat for a few minutes.  

Even if Tony never— even if there were never anything else, now— and how could there be?— there would still have been this.  Steve looked and looked, and took up a mental chisel to carve every last detail of the warm press of Tony against his side into his memory. 

Eventually, of course, everything had to end.  Steve couldn’t have said for sure how much time had passed, but it felt like they’d been there half an hour when Tony cleared his throat and looked away.  “Sorry I cried on you last night,” he said.

Steve scrunched him even harder, for a moment.  “Any time,” he repeated, as he had the night before.

Tony smiled and looked down, but it didn’t break their fragile, peaceful little kingdom.  Instead, the warmth and tenderness crept back in, filling the silence with something delicious all over again.  

It was another ten minutes before Steve spoke again, words falling into the stillness like a weight into warm sand.  “I knew him,” he said.

Tony just shook his head.  “I’m sorry?”  It wasn’t an apology; he just hadn’t heard Steve.

“Your father— Howard.  We met— oh, I can’t tell you most of it.”  

Steve had faced this particular dilemma before with Tony, and it still left an awfully bad taste in his mouth.  He wanted to tell Tony the truth— about everything, but particularly about the fact that he was Captain America.  Steve felt that was important to understanding who he was, to really, bone-deep  _ getting  _ why Steve might think that missing his chance to meet his soulmate face to face was, nevertheless, worth it. 

(It was also worth noting that Tony was not exactly indifferent to Steve’s alter-ego; in fact, Steve had started to suspect that he was what you might call a fan.)

But Steve just... Try as he might to work out an excuse, he just couldn’t make himself do it.

The thing was, he’d been charged by the United States government— by some folks placed pretty high up in the chain of command, in fact— with keeping his identity a secret, and no exception had been made for the fact that Steve had a ‘Scape.  Sacrifices had been made— a lot of trouble had been gone to— to keep that secret, and Steve couldn’t justify turning his back on all that just because he wanted to.

Just because he  _ thought  _ he could trust in Tony.

What if he were wrong?  What if this was one great hallucination caused by the Nazis?  He’d have betrayed the whole effort, and not even the rock-solid certainty in his chest that Tony was precisely who and what he said he was could make the risk worth it.

So he kept it vague, and hated himself a little as he did it.

“He and I— we met a couple of times, during the war.  Confidential stuff.”  He frowned.  “Never met your mother, though, I don’t think...”

“Oh.”  Tony let his head drop as he considered this, not-so-coincidentally pillowing it against Steve’s pointy shoulder while he worked on it.  Eventually, he raised his head up again, and his pupils were pinpricks in his bright blue eyes.  

It was like looking into the sun.  

“Did you like him?”

Steve hesitated, and then said, “Yes,” but it was too fast, it wasn’t the right answer, it was— 

Tony was smiling.  

Tony was  _ smiling!   _ Steve bit his lip in surprise.

“You didn’t,” Tony said confidently, a delighted smile hiding behind his reddened eyes.  “You tried to convince yourself you liked him, but you didn’t, really.”

Steve bit his lip, tilting his head away in acknowledgement of the truth— and squashing down tight the tiny flare of relief that Tony wasn’t going to press to hard about the circumstances of their meeting.  “You and I had a conversation, once,” he said instead.  “About the president?  And you wanted to know why he couldn’t just— you know, not?”

“Yeah, and you said the answer was testosterone poisoning?”

“Was  _ what?   _ No, I didn’t!”  Steve had never even heard that particular phrase, and if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have used it.

“That was the essence of it!  No, come on, it was!”  Tony was full-on grinning, now, even if the grin was cracked and fractured in a dozen places.  “And you brought this up in relation to my dad  _ because...?” _

Steve shrugged.  “I think you know,” he said.  “He had his own dose, is all.  He was charming, though,” he hastened to add, unwilling to speak ill of the dead, even less willing to speak ill of Tony’s father.  “And he was brilliant!  So brilliant.  I can’t even tell you—” He broke off, smiling crookedly.  “Well, actually, I  _ can’t  _ tell you most of it.  But he— well, he saved my life, anyway.”

Tony watched him carefully, a sardonic expression on his face that flaked apart as he spoke.  “For a while, anyway,” he said, shaking.  The roll of blankets around him jostled and quivered, and all Steve could do was hold on tighter and tighter.  “I’m so glad you knew him,” Tony gasped.  “I”m really glad.  I’m really glad you  _ saw  _ him, because— because—”

“Tony?”

“— Because I  _ hated him.”   _ Tony sniffed hard, and almost succeeded in holding it back, but there were still tears edging down his nose.  “He wanted the perfect son, and I couldn’t be that, nobody could, and I was  _ pretty good,  _ Steve, I was!  I tried so hard for him!”

“I know you did,” Steve said, throat burning, and it was true:  he had not an ounce of doubt that Tony had tried his hardest, done his damnedest, to be exactly what Howard had wanted.  He knew Tony well enough by now to know that he would always, instinctively, try to do what was right.  “You’re a good man, Tony.  I know you did.”  He thought back to his ma comforting the ladies who came to her, and tried to keep his voice similarly even and soothing.  He wasn’t sure how effective it was, but he must’ve done  _ something  _ right, because Tony kept talking.

Or maybe he just needed to talk for a bit.

“I was never good enough for him, and it felt  _ so weird,  _ Steve, because I finally realized that that  _ wasn’t on me!  No one  _ could’ve— could’ve been good enough, I mean— not for Howard—”  Steve flinched internally at the mocking contortions of Tony’s face and voice as he said the name.   _ “— Captain fucking America  _ wouldn’t have been good enough for him.”  He snuffled again, noisily, and wiped his face and nose on a pillowcase.  (Steve mentally winced, and not just for the reference to his secret identity, either.  But, he reminded himself, it was a dream-pillowcase, and the mess would be gone tomorrow.  Hopefully.)  

He was sure his face was doing something bizarre as he made the only response he possibly could have.  “I’m completely sure you’re right.”

“And it’s  _ not fair.”  _  Tony jolted, then broke like a faulty dam.  All at once he was crying with heartbreaking, full-bodied sobs, shaking inside of his blanket roll.  Steve patted his back, helplessly, just hoping Tony was going to come through this alright.  Tony must’ve used one heck of a tranquilizer, he reflected as he soothed and patted, because this kind of crying usually woke a fellow up.

“It’s okay,” he said in that soothing-ma-voice.  “It’ll be okay.  I’m here...”  He stroked Tony’s back as it spasmed and ugly, guttural noises spilled out between them.  “It’s okay, it’s okay...  It’s okay...”

Eventually, the shakes subsided to tremors and Tony wiped his face on the pillowcase again.  “Sorry.  I know that’s just...  ‘It’s not fair’ is just about the most  _ childish  _ thing to say...”

“It’s not childish!”  Steve would’ve objected to just about any criticism Tony had for himself right at that moment, but on reflection, he felt this one was true.  “We want our parents to be good parents,” he said, thinking of his own father.  “We want to believe that the world is fair, and that they are good models of what it means to  _ be  _ fair.  A betrayal of that...  Well, it’s a  _ betrayal.”  _  He stopped patting Tony’s back and squeezed his arm through the blankets.  “Not childish.  Normal, really.”

“Yeah, well.”  Tony picked at the blanket in front of him, pulling at a loose thread.  “Normal is unacceptably banal for a Stark,” he informed Steve in a tone that came just shy of impersonating Howard.  Steve pushed down on the surge of rage that swamped through him; maybe it wasn’t something that Howard had said, maybe it was just something that he had only  _ sort of  _ said, but even that was  _ enough,  _ wasn’t it?  

He clenched his jaw.  “Nice thing is,” he told Tony in a voice as smooth as a fresh granite headstone, “You’re the only Stark there is, now, so nobody can say what a Stark does except you.”

Tony stared at him, clearly startled by the thought, hand stilled where it had been pulling that poor blanket to shreds. 

He looked at the pillow and swallowed before speaking again.  “I’d gotten sick of it,” he said.  “Of the trying to be good.  I was  _ done.   _ I wasn’t purposefully trying to infuriate him, or anything, but at the same time, if something  _ did  _ piss him off...  It was like a bonus, you know?”

Steve did know; he remembered that mindset, too, from his own youth.  “Okay,” he agreed, shifting his weight so that he turned more onto his side.  The wool afghan tickled his leg where his trousers had ridden up, and he twitched he foot to try to toss it aside.

“And now I guess...  I don’t know.”

He wished he could brush Tony’s hair back, or cup his hand around the other man’s neck; something more intimate than this, to let him know he was here.  But what they had was what they had, and he would have to make do:  he ran his hand up and down Tony’s blanket-covered arm, instead, rubbing warmth into him.  “What don’t you know?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

Tony looked up at him through eyelashes all clumped together with tears.  “I just...  Who do I want to be?  What do I want my legacy to be?  I don’t even have a  _ clue, _ really.  At first I was following, and then I was pushing against, but... I was always letting myself be determined by him.”

Steve let his eyebrows shoot up, almost cheering inside.   _ Who else, _ he thought with an enormous rush of fondness,  _ who else but  _ my soulmate, _ who else but  _ Tony Stark,  _ would look at this situation and start planning for the future so quickly?  _  Who else would have turned around, face still streaked in the evidence of their grief and also guilty relief, and started asking how to make the world  _ better?   _

_ God, I love you,  _ he thought, and then caught himself thinking it, the words echoing and repeating in his mind so loudly it was hard to think of anything else.   _ I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you...   _

He coughed, blushing, and looked away, and hated more than anything he’d ever felt that he was too dead to do Tony a damned bit of good.  “Well,” he offered, “I guess now you’ve got a chance to do something else, instead?”

He wasn’t looking, so he didn’t see it when Tony wormed his arms out of the blanket, grabbed the pillow, and used it to wrap him in a tight, perfect hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys I promise I will eventually stop torturing Tony. Not, y'know, next chapter or anything... but eventually. 
> 
> Promise.
> 
> Kudos and comments feed the hungry beast!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, am I doing this already? Apparently I am. Many thanks to Valmasy for the hand-holding and reassurance, and also for being quick like a bunny on turning this around for me! 
> 
> Extra-long chapter because I combined two smaller chapters into one. That wound up saving y'all a cliffhanger, but I have actually seen the end of this chapter, and I know that you probably aren't going to appreciate it much. *halo* Next chapter is even worse, I'm afraid... But at least this one contains some high-density fluff, ~~and the next chapter or so after that should have some porn.~~

Tony got through Christmas.

Barely, and with a lot of help from Steve and Jarvis, but he did it.

 

* * *

 

On Valentine’s day, he went out to a party and came back completely sloshed with three different starlets— models— teenyboppers, _whatever—_ at once.  Their names were Mandy, Jenny, and Tina, but he couldn’t keep straight which one was which.  They didn’t seem to mind, though, even when he was too drunk to do much more than work them over with his mouth.  He sent them all some nice jewelry after, just in case; it seemed like the thing to do.

 

* * *

 

“Well, the one good thing about the whole situation is, since I’ve taken over the company, I’ve been too busy to get up to much mischief,” Tony said in March, leaning back against the lump of blankets that was Steve.  “Special occasions only, now.  So the newspapers have died down about how I’m an irresponsible waste who represents the downfall of my generation, which is nice.”

Steve scowled.

“No, don’t even bother,” Tony said lightly, interpreting the look correctly.  “You can’t bring down the fourth estate from beyond the grave.  It’s nice that you want to try, though.”

They hadn’t gone back to the library, yet.  It was coming — Tony could tell it was coming; the wonders of being able to speak freely vied with the mental stimulation of people-watching, and also they both missed Winnie, although Steve at least was trying not to make a big deal out of it.  But for now, the joy of wrapping up in a blanket next to each other was— it was bright.  It glittered, and filled Tony’s chest with these scintillating points of light, and he couldn’t—

So for now, they were always burritoed up on the bed.  

 

* * *

 

Tony didn’t tell Steve when his birthday was, but Steve found out anyway because Winnie passed it along.  She appeared to consider Steve completely incapable of taking proper care of Tony, ever since Steve hadn’t known about the Starks’ deaths, and was watching like a cat to make sure he didn’t make any miss-steps.  

So Steve was able to find Tony a stack of the ridiculous adventure-romance novels he liked to read, which he dutifully checked out from the ‘Scape library, although Winnie rolled her eyes the entire time they were setting him up a card.  “It’s the Dreamscape, Steve!  It’s _imaginary!”_

“I don’t care,” he told her.

It was worth it for the look on Tony’s face.

 

* * *

 

Of course, after that, Tony demanded to know when _Steve’s_ birthday was.  He laughed when he found out, but that was alright; Steve privately thought Tony didn’t laugh enough, these days.

When the day finally came, they agreed to spend that night together, or as close as Tony could get— sometimes he went a few days without coming to the ‘Scape, a phenomenon he blamed on “not enough sleep”, and which Steve strongly suspected was more likely due to “not any sleep”.  But at any rate, the days worked out this time, and Tony and Steve ambled in and upstairs in the slanted half-light of a summer storm.

“So odd about the weather,” Steve commented.  “I remember there were almost never storms on my birthday while I was alive.  And then in the evening, everyone would go out to the water to see the fireworks.”

“Yeah, it’s unusual,” Tony agreed.  “I was honestly expecting that we’d have a normal, sunny afternoon, but the Weather Channel’s been predicting storms for the last couple of days, and sometimes that sort of seeps into everyone’s subconscious enough for it to carry over to the ‘Scape.”

“I guess,” Steve agreed.  Tony had been studying, and now knew much more about that sort of thing than he did.

“Hey, want a sandwich?”  Tony pulled his arm into a kitchen large enough for half a dozen people to work in, with a central table that Steve suspected Tony generally preferred to the large formal dining room further on.  

He wasn’t lying about the sandwiches, either, or about having a coke, although Steve frowned to realized it was in a tin can and not a bottle.  In fact, it turned out that Tony had a whole itinerary of things ready for Steve, finishing up with Steve on the roof, in a sort of lean-to made out of a tarp and a few folding metal chairs.  Tony had also provided a water-proofed duffel full of a regular blanket and cushions, and a small brazier to fight off any chill, not that that was an issue.  “How did you get all this stuff?” Steve asked, pitching his voice to carry over the wind and the patter of fat, warm raindrops.

Tony grinned at him, a crazy, lightning-bright gleam in his eyes.  “I’ve gotten _very, very good_ at manipulating the Dreamscape!” he yelled back.  “If you think the semi-shed thing we’ve got going on here is good, _watch this!”_ And then, turning, he ran to the edge of the roof and pulled a long rope slung over the side of the building.  

Nothing happened.  

Tony frowned, leaning forward and peering into the misty gray.  “Da— darn it, why aren’t you working?” he asked at a more normal volume, and then his body jerked in surprise and he fled back across the roof, throwing himself in next to Steve.  “Look!” he said, pointing behind him.

Steve looked.

Something rose in the air, sparks and colors streaming from behind it, rising and twisting and turning but always heading up, until it was high enough overhead to safely explode.  When it burst, it did so in a flurry of magenta and golden color, a resonant _boom!_ echoing over the ‘Scape.

Steve laughed, delighted.  “You got me a _rocket?”_ he asked Tony over the noise of the rain.  “I can’t believe it!  You know, I’ve _missed_ those, come to think of it!”

Tony smiled back, tightly.  “Right,” he said.  “Yes.  That is what I did.  I ‘bought’ you ‘a’ rocket.”  The smile turned more genuine.  “I did know you missed them,” he added.

That was when the second one went off.

One after another, coming closer and closer together, green and blue and orange and red, purple and white and gold.  Whistles and growls filled the air as the fireworks rose and fell, trails and smoke fogging everywhere.  Steve watched, as wide-eyed and mesmerized as a kid because he had never been this close to them before.  

The finale was particularly spectacular, a smorgaboard of pom-pom style explosives in all the colors of the rainbow.  Afterwards, Steve didn’t even look away— couldn’t— mesmerized by the sight, and more, by the existence, of the fireworks.

When, at last, he was able to turn and look, Tony was looking distinctly nervous.  “Did... did you like it?” he asked, hesitantly.

Steve laughed and smiled hard enough to break his face.  “Did I _like_ it?” he echoed, incredulous.  “I _loved_ it!  Tony, you’re a genius!”  And then he swung the blanket around Tony’s shoulders and hugged him, again.  

Tony made a hitched-breath sound and leaned into him, and it felt like nothing so much as coming home as they sat in the lean-to on top of a mansion in the middle of New York, listening to the rain fall through the lingering clouds of smoke.  

 

* * *

 

“Wait.  What did you mean, you didn’t buy them?”

“I said I _did_ buy them.”

“Yeah, but you were lying— _Tony!”_

“Whaaaat?”

_“Stop making explosives in your kitchen!”_

 

* * *

 

Steve didn’t notice anything was wrong until he came down to the front of the library to see if Winnie was there yet.

She wasn’t.

Neither was anybody else.

Steve frowned, setting his latest book on the returns cart.  He had been reading in the upstairs, finishing his book _(Lord of the Flies),_ for the last couple of hours of subjective time; he certainly hadn’t noticed anything awry while he was reading.  Then he had headed downstairs, and there had been no one around, but that wasn’t unusual, either— it was a large building, and the stairs were not the most common place to hang out.

But now...

The circulation desk was a popular place; there should have been _some_ folks around.  “What on _Earth...?”_  He turned in a slow circle, trying to figure it out, but no explanation revealed itself.  

For the first time in all Steve’s years of haunting it, the library was completely, inexplicably, empty.

Now truly concerned, he walked towards the doors, down the steps out to the street.  The street was also empty, and of course it was just the mansion to the south, but there was another building on the other side of the library, so Steve headed there.  

The next building over was an apartment complex, a pretty fancy one, with a wildly ornate lobby.  Steve could see at a glance that it was the sort of place where, ordinarily, soulmates would gather to meet up.

There was only one person in the whole lobby, now, though:  an Arabic man, holding a steaming mug and shivering, knees drawn off the floor towards his chest, hunched in.  

Steve frowned.  It was barely fall; the day wasn’t cold.  And the man’s eyes were wide.

He was terrified.

Moving quickly, Steve paced across the floor, kneeling at the man’s feet.  “Hello?” he asked uncertainly.

The man eyed him dubiously, but did not answer.  There was a good chance that he didn’t understand at all, actually— Steve doubted Mr. Fitzpatrick, from his old neighborhood, had understood his German soulmate when they met in the ‘Scape— and you were more likely to meet folks (or to _be_ folks) who didn’t understand the local language in the Dreamscape, just because folks who had a foreign Dreamscape tended to learn the language before they got there.

He tried again, though, just in case.  “I’m sorry, but there’s no one here.  Do you know where all the people are?”  He kept his voice gentle, so that, even if the man didn’t understand him, he wouldn’t be afraid.

And it worked.  The man shook his head, but it looked less like a negative answer than a refusal of bad news, this time.  “The Towers,” he said.  

Now _Steve_ shook his head.  “What?”

“The Towers!  The Towers fell!  You must have seen the news?!”

“No, I haven’t.  I can’t see any news.”  Steve hesitated; it would probably be _more_ scary to hear he was dead, right?  And anyway, it’d be needlessly complicated.  “I’m in a coma,” he claimed.  “I hadn’t even met my soulmate when I—”

“You are in a what?”

“A coma.  A coma?”  Steve caught his voice getting louder, and quieted himself down again.  “You know, a long sleep?  Where you can’t wake up?”

“Oh, oh!”  The triumph of comprehension came first, and then the import of the words.  The man blinked.  “I am sorry,” he said, and while his English was thick and fragmentary, his sincerity was genuine.  “That is sucks.”

Steve laughed, surprised.  “Yeah, it does,” he admitted.  “It is sucks.”

The Arab clutched his mug tighter, and looked at Steve warily.  “It is because no one is asleep,” he said.  “Or—”  He clearly struggled to find an English word, and failed; probably, he was trying to find a phrase that meant _non-REM sleep,_ but what he actually _said_ was, “—bad sleep.  All are frightened.”

“But _why?_ The Towers fell?  What Towers?”

“The World Trade Center.”  The man pronounced the words distinctly, a slight space between each one.  Steve remembered, abruptly, Tony telling him about the building, saying that one of Stark Industries’ suppliers was headquartered out of one of the towers.  “It was an attack.  Sabotage and—”  The next word got lost in a welter of muddy vowels and liquid rolled-r sounds.  The man raised his mug to his face and took a quick, nervous sip.  “They say that five thousand people are dead or missing.”

 _Five thousand!_ Steve shook his head, eyes wide, and clenched his fists.  “No,” he denied.  “No, it can’t be.”

The man’s fingers were tight on his mug.  “Maybe it can,” he said, jaw tight.

Steve’s mind raced with what that meant, with the implications, with the _horror_ of it.  He scrubbed his fists down his legs, then bowed his head and rose to his feet.  “Thank you,” he said formally. “I wish you well.”

The Arab shook himself out of funk and bowed his head in return.  “And you.  May your sleep end soon.”

Steve backed away one foot at a time, and then, as he hit the door, turned tail and raced pell-mell for Tony’s mansion.  

 

* * *

 

Tony wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in the library, either.

Steve paced, and waited.

 

* * *

 

He ran back and forth between the two buildings a few times, but in the end, he realized his best bet was to wait in the library.  Other people would come there eventually, and surely _one_ of them would have news.

 

* * *

 

Winnie showed up before Tony did.  She looked tired, but not ill or wounded, and she actually had a smile for Steve as he hopped the circulation desk to talk to her.  “Come on, let’s go in the back,” she said, waving for him to follow her.

“Winnie, _wait—”_  He followed, jittery.  “Winnie, is _Tony...?”_

She stopped and turned back.  “He wasn’t in the Towers,” she told him.  “Wasn’t even in town, that day.  He actually called me and asked me to make sure you knew, he was in D.C. when it happened.  And not at the Pentagon, either.”  She started walking again, heading for the back door that Steve had, out of respect for her and the other librarians, never been through.  “He did come back to town yesterday, of course, to help out those of his employees who have lost people to this.  I believe Stark Industries has also made a substantial financial contribution, which, given the way things are going, I guess they can afford to make.”

“What do you mean?”  He stopped beside her as she used a key to open a door marked _Wilhelmina Lafayette, Research Librarian._ There was also a picture, hand-drawn in pencil, on the outside, showing Winnie in a fur ruff and crown and captioned _All bow to Queen Winnie!,_ and Steve smiled to see the evidence that someone else out there knew how great Winnie was. “They can _afford...?”_

She gave him an eyebrow and put her hip into the door as she turned the knob.  “SI’s a weapons company, Steve.  And we just declared war.”

Steve flinched as the bald statement hit him, following her numbly into the room.   _It would have been nice to believe,_ he thought, _even if only for a little bit, that we’d moved beyond that...  It would have been nice to think I had made a difference..._

But no; all these years later, and they were still beset by enemies, apparently.  Enemies, this time, who would apparently strike at civilian centers in the heart of a major city...  

He sucked in a slow breath and did his best to release the fury and grief.  “Declared war on who?” he asked Winnie.  “Who did it?”

“Don't get me _started,”_ she answered, her voice dark, and then contrary to what she had just said, launched into an explanation of a complex political situation that sounded like nothing so much as a headache.  When she wound down— she was furious for some reason Steve couldn’t quite put together— she punched the switch on an electric kettle and pulled out a color-coded display of beverage packets.   “Come have some hot chocolate,” she told him tiredly.  “And you may as well hang out in my office for a while.  Your boy isn’t going to be getting much sleep any time this month.”

 

* * *

 

 

Winnie was right; it was a week before Steve saw Tony at all, in fact, and then only briefly.  Just long enough for Tony to promise to get things set up and squared away for distribution before Thanksgiving.

He was two days late to that deadline, too, but Steve was so happy to see him, he didn’t quibble.  

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Tony said, breezing in through the library doors in his pajamas.  He seemed excited, practically buzzing, and Steve couldn’t help smiling at it.  

“Merry Christmas,” he answered, gesturing at the elaborate tree erected near the circulation desk.  

“Merry Christmas, you idiots,” Winnie called over, slamming a book and stomping towards the back of the library.  “Stark, tell me if it works.”

“Of course it’ll work!” Tony shouted after her, only to be shushed by the three ‘Scape patrons gathered in the lobby.  Tony rolled his eyes and nodded at Steve.  “Come on,” he said.  “Let’s go.”

Steve smiled, wishing he could bump Tony’s shoulder or grab his arm or —

They raced back towards the children’s section.

“So what is it?” Steve asked impatiently, once they were settled in with large flat books, small round pillows, and no one else around.

Tony grinned brighter than the sun and wriggled his hand into the pocket of his pajamas.  He clenched it there, closing his eyes to focus; Steve tried not stare at the wing-like sweep of black lashes.  

“Close your eyes,” Tony breathed, “And hold out your hand.”

In the darkness behind his eyelids, Steve could hear Tony’s still-rapid breathing.  

After a second, something long and thin, like a pencil, dropped into his palm.  Steve jerked his head up, meeting Tony’s brilliant blue gaze, feeling a rush of something warm and overwhelming surge through him.

There was a candy cane resting on his palm.

“Merry Christmas, Steve,” Tony whispered, looking at him fondly.

Steve swallowed, then did it again.  “Merry Christmas, Tony,” he answered.  Very carefully, he unwrapped the candy cane and stuck the curved end in his mouth.  

It was even sweeter than he had expected.

 

* * *

 

The next time Steve saw Tony, it had been a full week and Tony wasn’t smiling nearly so much.  

“No, it’s not— c’mon, Steve, it’s not like that!”  Tony ran a hand, roughly, through his hair, and scratched at his chin.  (He was in the process of growing a Van Dyke, and apparently, it was itchy.)  “I’m not depressed or anything.  I’m just _tired,_ is all, and I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow at him.  “You’re more than tired, Tony; you’re exhausted.  You need to take care of yourself.”

But Tony was already shaking his head.  “Things will settle down,” he insisted.  “No, they _will!_ I just need to make sure that the distribution snafu gets corrected, and it’s _taking_ awhile.”  He settled down next to Steve’s side, both of them back on the floor of the Children’s Section, a pillow sandwiched between their shoulders, a book between their hips.  “The recall part is all done, we’re sending out the corrected arms in two days, and then I get to fly to the Middle East to get sand in my eyes and explain to an entire deployment of American troops that I’m very sorry I took all their guns but here, have some better-made guns, instead!”  He grimaced sarcastically.  “It’ll be a blast.”

Steve sighed, and let it go.  Tony had, briefly, mentioned his problems with the recall, but he hadn’t gone into any depth, and since it was clearly occupying his mind...  “How did they end up getting faulty guns, anyway?  Isn’t there— you test them internally, right?”

“Sure, we do.” Tony gave a little flick of his fingers with the hand not holding the book.  “And actually, testing caught the flaw, and the flawed models were all pulled from the line so that the problem could be found and dealt with— which it _was._ I mean, this was not amateur hour.”

“So what happened?”  Steve reached forward and tucked one of the larger pillows on top of his shins, then patted it invitingly; with a grateful sigh, Tony swung his legs up and rested them, carefully, on the pillow.

“Idiocy.  Well, mostly idiocy— fallibility, anyway.  The guy responsible for labelling the flawed Tobies— sorry, internal nickname; they’re these wide-barrelled rifles, you use them to snipe entire vehicles, basically.  Anyway, the guy responsible for putting the bad Tobies to bed f— messed up, and walked away in the middle of the process.  Someone else came along, saw all these Tobies hanging around outside of their proper area, and took the initiative to fix that, which, under any other circumstances, would have been rewarded.  As it is, though, about five percent of the flawed models got mis-labelled and shipped out.”  He scratched at his chin again.

“Five percent doesn’t _sound_ like a lot,” Steve offered tentatively.  

Tony shrugged.  “In the long term, it’s not.  It’s not going to affect how much the company makes by more than half a percent this year, and that’s including the public perception fallout from having exploding Tobies in the first place.  We’re working very hard and very fast to put an end to it, and people appreciate that, so...  But in the short term, it’s exhausting, and it’s probably going to cost the company about ten million dollars just in talliable expenses.  The opportunity cost, lost face, all of that, that’s gonna cost a lot more.”  He flicked an eyebrow.  “Still manageable, though.  And we’re doing all the right things.”  

Steve chewed on his lip, and thought about it.  “And you say you’re actually going out to the theater?  That’s Afghanistan, right?”  He tried not to let it creep into his voice how bad an idea he thought this was, but Tony probably had figured it out, anyway.

“Yeah.”  Tony reached over and squeezed the pillow above Steve’s knee.  It didn’t quite reach him, but Tony’s hands were a lot bigger than they had been five years ago.  “Don’t worry.  They don’t have me scheduled to drop in anywhere near the front, and I’ll be accompanied by a whole unit the whole time I’m there.”

Steve privately thought that just meant the Army knew it was a dumb idea to have him there, but he held his tongue.  

Tony reached down and patted the shin pillow.  “Relax,” he comforted Steve.  “Dad did this all the time, and look at him.  He was fine!”

 

* * *

 

Steve was a nervous wreck the whole time Tony was gone, which was just over a week.  Tony did make it to the ‘Scape once while in Afghanistan, but wasn’t able to stay longer than the time it took to say, “I told you so.”  

“Jetlag,” he explained ruefully.  “And an early meeting with the General.”

 

* * *

 

When he was finally home, safe, the first thing Tony did when Steve met him in the ‘Scape was to raise his eyebrows pointedly.  

“Aw, come on,” Steve objected.

The eyebrows crept higher.

“Alright, alright!”  Steve raised both hands and the swiped them down again, the gesture declaring the conversation disposed of.  “You were right, and I was wrong, and next time you go into a _combat zone,_ I guess I’ll just try not to worry about you.”  

Tony sniffed, and turned his back, which Steve knew _damned good and well_ was to hide a grin.  “Thank you,” he sniped.  “That would be appreciated.”

“Clearly, you were never in a speck of danger,” Steve shot back, without _too_ much sarcasm.  “You are here, unhurt, and I should just assume that all your future endeavors will be blessed with fairy kisses and flowers springing at your feet.”

Alright, maybe a _bit_ too much sarcasm.

“Forget-me-nots,” Tony corrected, starting up the staircase to the second floor with more pep by far than he’d had the previous week.  “Always be specific, Steve.  Forget-me-nots, and _occasionally_ alyssums.”  

Steve took the opportunity of Tony’s back being turned to let the relief surge through all his limbs, then hopped up the stairs after his soulmate.

 

* * *

 

“So tell me about these machines,” Steve said, pointing as they headed down the stairs towards the front of the library.

Tony looked, and double-taked.  “The _computers?_  You finally want to know about how to work _computers?_  Why now?”

“Is _that_ what they are?  I thought computers were, you know…”  He made a gesture with his hands, a tall, broad one in a boxy shape.  “...bigger.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not the size that counts,” Tony snickered, shoving his hair back and licking his lips.  “Come on.”  He stretched, arms reaching up towards the ceiling, t-shirt pulling over strong shoulders, and led the way.

Steve blew his hair out of his eyes with a huffed-out breath, and followed.

It was becoming a problem.

The thing was, Tony had always been beautiful.  He had dramatic coloring, a well-built form, and a handsome face that was only going to get more good-looking as he got older.  But when Steve had first met him, he’d also been _young—_ sixteen, Steve knew now— and he’d looked it.  So while he was cute kid, and Steve had already been able to tell he would be a handsome man…  He hadn’t been a handsome man _yet._

And Tony— younger Tony, the Tony Steve had first met— had been absolutely willing to make a play for him, too.  It was very flattering, in its way, but Steve had known instinctively that it wasn’t the right time yet, and as the years had gone on, he’d also become increasingly aware of another substantial problem.

As in, the problem itself was substantiality.

And the fact that Steve _didn’t have any._

Hard to kiss your sweetheart if you were a ghost.  Even if your interest was acceptable— and, to be fair to Tony, that had never seemed to be something he was— well— that was—

Steve sighed, and tried again.

Tony had never made any pretense of being uninterested in Steve.  

But, after Steve had turned him down, Tony had also never seemed _overly_ interested in Steve, either.  In fact, as far as he could tell, Tony’s ardour had faded away, starting from the minute Steve told him to look elsewhere for romance, and it hadn’t come back since.  

(Which was _fine,_ he reminded himself.  Growing up, almost all the fellows with other fellows as their soulmates had been friends, not lovers.  Or at least that was what they said, anyway, and who was going to argue with them?  It might be more common now— it definitely seemed to be more accepted, based on things Tony had told him— but surely it wasn’t the rule.

Back then, Steve had always expected that, if he _did_ have a male soulmate, they wouldn’t be lovers.  When he recognized his, uh, well... his own... _interest..._ in men, as much as if not more than women, he had mentally shrugged without substantially adjusting his worldview.  

It didn’t _change_ anything, did it?)

And it wasn’t like he’d been wrong, back then, either.  Tony still _couldn’t touch him,_ and he couldn’t touch Tony, either.  It didn’t _matter_ that he’d started to _want_ to.

 _Boy,_ had he started to want to, though.

Ever since Tony’s parents had died, and Steve had wrapped Tony in a blanket and just held him, he had had...  There was a certain _fascination_ with, oh...  the stretch of a shirt over Tony’s shoulders...  the play of the light along his cheekbones...  the curve of shadow at the small of Tony’s back...

It wasn’t okay, Steve reminded himself, heart beating too hard, too fast.  It wasn’t okay, because all it was doing was setting them both up for heartache and failure, and that was _cruel._ He wouldn’t do that to anyone, much less someone he loved as much as he loved Tony!

Didn’t stop him from wanting to, though.

 _Really_ didn’t stop him.

Oh, _god..._

Tony, meanwhile, was oblivious.  He had, to all appearances, firmly shifted Steve into the “Nope, not an option” category, and that was that:  Steve was a pal, and that was _it,_ now and forever more, amen.

But Tony had shown up today in a washed-thin t-shirt, and Steve had almost passed out.  And Steve wasn’t even sure whether a guy _could_ pass out in a Dreamscape!  Tony was lively, animated, charming…  He was tall, graceful, astonishingly  muscular...   And then there was the _other_ side of Tony that Steve had been privileged to see: the vulnerable part, the part that had constantly yearned for his father’s approval, the part that was quick to make himself the butt of a joke before anybody else had a chance…

Steve was completely head over heels for the guy at this point, and there was no hope for it, and it was _agony._ A kind of good agony, though?  There was a certain giddy edge to the ache— or maybe it was that there was a painful throb to the giddiness— and it only made the whole thing more confusing.

Basically, while Steve knew that telling Tony to find someone else was the right decision, he also regretted it every minute of every day.  And he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

It was a complicated situation.

But God, there was nothing Steve wouldn’t do for Tony.

So, yes, he cheerfully distracted him with the computers.

 

* * *

 

 

All things considered, Steve was pretty impressed with the internet; it seemed pretty useful— or it would be if he were alive, at any rate.  When they were done, Tony opened a different program, typed up the instructions for Steve to try this himself, fingers flying over the keys faster than a concert pianist’s, and told the machine to print.

“Here,” he said, handing Steve the paper, which was, indeed, neatly typed with all the directions Tony had just written out.  “Put it in your pocket, would you?  It’ll just vanish if you leave it lying around the Dreamscape.”

“It’s warm,” Steve blurted.

“Oh! Yeah— laserjet printer, it’s—” Tony stopped talking as Steve stepped closer, into his space.

Steve held the paper up vertically, in front of Tony’s face but just low enough that he could see a blue eye peeking out above it.  He leaned in, close, next to Tony’s cheek…

...and kissed the paper.

He knew immediately that he shouldn’t have done it.

A quick kiss, a peck, that was something that could be excused.  Write it off as excitement, a show of affection, maybe; they were soulmates, and a certain intimacy of expression was to be expected between friends that close.  

But the paper was _warm._  

He found himself... well… _lingering._

Senses in the Dreamscape were typically dulled; not the sight and sound, so much— although, Steve’s sight was back to its pre-serum dullness— but taste and scent were both somewhat muted in most cases.  (Tony, who had been studying it, had told him once that the Dreamscape was largely shaped by their expectations, and people don’t _think_ enough about the taste or scent of their world for those to be incorporated.)

But boy, Steve could sure smell Tony now, faint whiffs of cologne and sweat and expensive scotch, mingled with the sweet sleepy smell of a man curled up at home under at least two blankets.

It wasn’t that he’d never been this close to Tony, before.  He had, and quite a few times.  But this was different.

For one thing, before, there hadn’t been any… _nuzzling._

Because that was what Steve was doing, right now: nuzzling at the paper, nose pressing in above his mouth, lips warm on the dry leaf.  It was soft, it was gentle...  It was…  Well, it wasn’t _perfect,_ exactly, but it was probably as close as Steve was ever going to get, and he let himself have one more second before he had to pull away...

...And that was when Tony _moaned._

His eyes flew open— when had he _closed_ them?— and he met Tony’s gaze, which was startled, wide-eyed, and— longing.   _Yearning,_ even _._  That was— that was the expression Tony was wearing, unless Steve was _very_ much mistaken, and _when had that happened?_  When had Tony looked at him and thought, “Yes, this is something I want”?  Why would _anybody_ think that?  

“Christ,” Steve husked out.  “How long have I been _missing_ this?  I thought—”

“You thought _what?_ No, nevermind— _Steve!”_ Tony reached out hurried to grab Steve by his jacket, even though his hand passed through just as usual.  Steve looked down at it in dismay.  “Steve, that was — we should — we really need to _talk_ about this — !”

But it was too late. By then Tony was gone, faded from existence, because sometimes Tony, unlike Steve, woke up.

Steve staggered back, grasping around for something, anything to hold him upright.  He reached out and grabbed a stool, but, of course, his hand swiped through it like smoke.  He crashed to the ground, stunned, and it was several long, aching minutes before he even tried to get up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: I am old enough to remember 9/11; I was in the Midwest at the time, not in New York, but I was watching the news, and I remember the sick look on my older sister's face when she realized that her friend, who had joined the military to pay for college, would in fact be going to war. I remember watching Bush's speech that night, and I remember the broadcasts; the final death toll, when I looked it up while writing this, was just under three thousand, but in the days and weeks following the attacks, the estimates I heard were in fact around five. They dropped relatively quickly, and I think it wasn't more than a month or two before I heard someone make a joke about men who hadn't been in the Towers, but pretended they were to escape their wives. We adjusted quickly.
> 
> I had a hard time imagining Steve's reaction to this. On the one hand, the comparison everyone was making was to Pearl Harbor, which Steve, of course, would remember; on another, Steve is a New Yorker through and through, and this would be extra personal to him. On a third hand, though, he also wasn't around when the Twin Towers were built, and so the iconic value of them would be lost on him. And, fourth, his only knowledge of the Taliban would be abstract, learned through history books, and so it would seem almost sci-fi, the idea that this group he's never heard of destroyed a building he'd never seen, and now there were a bunch of people dead? But he'd still be horrified at the loss of life.
> 
> I guess what I'm saying here is, I really tried to treat the subject with the gravitas that was called for, and correct characterization, and if you think I blew it, please drop me a polite/respectful note in the comments explaining why you think so.
> 
> Please also feel free to drop a note about anything else, too-- for example, how utterly adorable Tony's candy-cane shenanigans are!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, boy. I ended up having a third major deviation from comics canon in this one. Basically, the first two deviations-- changing the timing so that Tony's injured in Afghanistan, and the presence of the Dreamscape/soulmates-- were necessary; the third one is only half-necessary, and the other half a mistake, and it has to do with Tony's cardiac apparatus. 
> 
> In the comics, Tony gets a) captured by Wong-Chu and his gang (which always sounds like a very bad porno to me, but whatever), who b) coerce him into making them weapons by withholding life-saving surgery, which c) he corrects by using magnets (???) in the Iron Man armor which he d) powers up for the first time while Yinsen dies. He then e) escapes (there are suction cups???) and meets Rhodey, who has a downed helicopter, which he f) uses to recharge the suit before they head to safety (by way of an enemy base??? Marvel comics: some *wild times*, apparently!). 
> 
> Anyway, most of this made zero sense to me, and by the time I realized that the *mechanism* of Tony's life-saving device, as well as the *form*, might be different in the comics, I already had him toting around a car battery for a chapter and a half.
> 
> So what I did was, I had a) stay the same, b) he agrees to build the weapons in exchange for a *small* surgery which implants a c) device that will keep him alive, but doesn't have a power source, which allows me to explain the battery while still having the IM chestplate be needed (it stores a charge, like a battery itself, which from what I can tell actually is true in the comics as well). For d) and e) it's the same (except possibly the suction cups?????), and so is f) except that the base is in Afghanistan and not Saigon.
> 
> It works out to be much more similar to the movie canon, and that's my fault. I did do research before starting to write these chapters, but not deeply enough to spot the flaws and/or my own assumptions. On the other hand, the car battery winds up having a significance in the 'Scape, and I was pretty reluctant to let that go, and also I was almost ten thousand words in by the time I realized the mistake! So here we are. 
> 
> Also, the porny chapter should be the next one or two-- it's all one big section, but it's turning out awfully long, so I may hack it in two.

Tony had another visit to Afghanistan coming soon, Steve knew.  He was scheduled to leave three days after the “almost kissing” incident, so it wasn’t _too_ surprising that Steve didn’t see him that week.  

Didn’t stop him from pacing until Winnie threw a stapler at his head, but it was at least predictable.  

 

* * *

 

The week _after_ that was a lot more worrying.

Steve was a _wreck,_ for one thing.  He couldn’t stop his self-flagellating panic: What had he _done?_ It was a stupid— it was an incredibly risky— what if Tony didn’t—

— But that was just it, wasn’t it?  Tony hadn’t minded.  Steve was sure of it, at least every other minute or so:  Tony had wanted him just as much as he’d been illicitly wanting Tony.  Hadn’t he?  

He had, right?

No, he had; Steve was sure of it.

So what was the _problem,_ then?!

 

* * *

 

Steve was sitting on top of a bookshelf on the second floor, near the head of the main stairway, when the screaming started.  Old instincts, long put aside since entering the ‘Scape, came back in a rush, and he found himself on his feet before he had even made the conscious decision to move, grasping the banister as he hurled himself down the stairs.

And, yes— his first thought had, in fact, been correct.  

It was Tony.   _Of course_ it was Tony.

He was standing, silhouetted, in the light of the glass doors, something fabric held wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak, an unidentified bulky object carried in the other arm, cradled against his stomach.  He stumbled forward, one step, then another, almost collapsing against the circulation desk as soon as he reached it; Winnie was already coming around the end.

“What hap— _what happened?!”_ Steve had gotten his first good look at him in the middle of asking the question.

It was...  

It was bad.

Tony’s blanket— it was the Cap-ghan— was clearly grabbed in an effort to disguise the gruesome horror that was his chest, and smears of red like handprints— some of them _were_ handprints— were staining the white parts, the star and the middle ring.  As a cover-up, it was only semi-successful; there were a dozen people in the front of the library, and judging by the screaming, at least some of them had gotten enough of a look to recognize the deadliness of the wound.  The soiled blanket was bad enough, but Steve found himself focusing in on the long-fingered hand clenching the blanket shut around Tony’s shoulders.  There was blood on the hand, too, drying along the fingers like Tony had just been handing a wound, and crusted under the nails as if he had been dealing with gore for a while.

“Oh, Jesus,” Steve swore, pressing the back of his trembling hand to his mouth as he stumbled forward.  What the hell had happened?!

He still couldn’t see what Tony was carrying; he couldn’t decide if that was better or worse.  It was large, whatever it was, and, by the strain in the shoulder of his left arm, it was heavy, too— perhaps forty or fifty pounds.  Unthinkingly, as Steve reached him, he put a hand out under the burden to steady it.

It worked.

Tony’s eyes flew open, a panic that matched Steve’s in his expression.  “You can _touch me?_ Oh, god, you can _touch me—_ am I dying?!”

Francine had patted Steve’s hand, before she walked out into the light.  Steve felt his stomach swoop and then clench as he realized, twenty years later, that the phrase might have applied metaphorically as well as literally.

His breath was coming quickly, _too_ quickly; he was panicking, air rushing backwards and forwards over his lips without ever making it into his throat.  “You can’t be,” he said.  “You _can’t._ Not you, and not now, and— no.  No, _Tony—!”_

But when he raised his shaking left hand to Tony’s face, it passed right through the cheek.

Their eyes met, and Tony’s were so wide, so full, that it seemed to Steve that there were probably a thousand gallons of thoughts and emotions swirling around behind them.  He wasn’t surprised at all to see Tony crack a— fragile, tremulous, _so brave—_ smile.  “I have no idea how I feel about this,” Tony said, the world in his eyes.   _“Steve—”_

“Come on,” Winnie broke in.  “Steve, Tony.   _Come on.”_ She turned, gesturing, and then tossed Steve a set of keys (which he was, barely, able to snatch out of the air).  “Steve, get him to my office.  You remember the way?”

Retreat to the familiar:  schematics, strategy.  “Perfectly,” he assured her.  He mentally traced over every last inch of hallway, right down to the way she’d had to put her shoulder into the door to get it to open, and decided it wasn't too far.  “Come on,” he said, and reached down.

The Cap-ghan, as Tony called it, was gigantic.  It was circular, and about ten feet in diameter, with the inner six feet taken up by the blue circle and inscribed star; the outer four feet were taken up with red and white stripes, just like his shield had been.  So it was more than large enough for Steve to wrap it around Tony and his mysterious burden, and just pick them both up together.  He was a little surprised he was able to manage it, given that he was without the physical benefits of the serum.    

He carried Tony back, behind the circulation desk, through the door, and down the twisty grey-lit hallway to Winnie’s office.  He couldn’t get the door with his hands full, so he jingled the keys off his fingers until Tony got the idea, taking them out of his hands and twisting them in the lock while Steve shoved, as Winnie had, with his back against the door.  He set Tony down carefully in the chair behind the desk, and then kneeled, opening the Cap-ghan carefully to reveal the damage which had, apparently, been _so_ severe that Tony had carried it with him to the 'Scape.

The first thing he noticed was that there was an _awful lot_ of gauze on Tony’s chest...  Tony wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the gauze was laid wide all over, but it was worse on the right— Tony’s left— than on the other side, the padding thickest over the left pec, like a white cotton toga.  The one place that _wasn’t_ wrapped in gauze— the right shoulder— had a single, square band-aid right on top.  The bandaging, Steve noted with a nauseated, sinking feeling, was stained with the dull, washed-out, dusty-brick color of old blood.  

The second thing he noticed was that there were two thick electrical leads, one red and one black, emerging from under the bandages.

Slowly, he followed them down with his gaze.

They were hooked into a car battery, of all things, still cradled, protectively, on Tony’s lap.  

A _car battery._

Steve shook his head, silent, appalled.  What the hell had they _done_ to Tony?  What kind of damned _machinery_ had they installed?!

He raised his gaze again, horrified, and had the devastating experience of watching Tony try to smile through a haze of nothing but pain.  “So,” Tony rasped, voice hard and sardonic.  “You like what you see?”

Steve couldn’t help it; he cried out, a wordless, horrified shout of denial, and threw himself backwards before catching himself on the industrial carpeting.  “God, Tony!” he burst out, “you crazy son of a—  How could you _ask_ that right now?  What _happened?”_ He swallowed and shook his head, gathering his wits; getting emotional wasn’t going to help.  “Are you somewhere safe?  Does anybody know where you are, are they coming to get you?   _What happened?”_

Tony was still wearing that smile, the one that made Steve want to cry and punch things.  “It’ll be okay,” he said  “It’s fine.  I just ran into a trap, that's all.  Ran afoul of some terrorists, using weapons _my company_ made—”  He stopped.

He was shaking, Steve realized, and without even thinking that it might be from anger instead of cold, Steve reached out and pulled a cuboid metallic pencil-holder off the desk.  He dumped all the pens out on the desk before tossing the thing across the room in such a way that it landed on the electric kettle’s latch, and soon the hissing, bubbling sound of heating water filled the office.

“Thanks,” Tony said, eyes softening affectionately.  “Nice shot.”

Steve jerked a shoulder.  “I’m just good at throwing things,” he dismissed awkwardly.  “You were saying...  One of your weapons?”

“Yeah.  Not a Toby, either— that’d be ironic, wouldn’t it? — No, there was an explosive.  Stepped right into it.  I’ve been—”  He cut off with a choke, hunching over, pain glazing his eyes for a minute.  He crossed his arms over his chest, squeezing tight, one fist pressed to the left side where the bandages were thickest.

“Oh, damn, that’s awful,” he panted.

Steve, ironically, was the one who was closest to screaming.  

A soft knock sounded at the door, and it opened to reveal Winnie, grave and calm  on the other side.  

“I’ve taken care of the folks who were in the entryway,” she told them.  “They won’t say anything about seeing you today.”

Tony nodded, a grateful expression on his face.  “Thanks, Ms. Winnie.  I would hate for people to see me like this...  I appreciate the cover.”

Her face tightened.  “Would you like me to leave, then?”

Tony hesitated, but shook his head.  “No, stay.  I was just telling Steve what happened.”

The story was _awful._ Tony was clearly in pain through all of it, for one thing, and he kept breaking off to gasp, and press that fist to his chest like a man having a heart attack.  His captors must have him on some extremely potent narcotics for him to be sleeping through this...

And that was the other thing, of course.  Tony had _captors._ He was a _prisoner,_ for some people who, from the sound of it, wanted him to do some very bad things.  “I’m playing along, for the time being,” Tony told them, hesitant and a bit shamefaced.  

“Good,” Winnie said immediately.  She crossed her arms, a fierce expression on her usually mild face.

Tony smiled at her, touched.  “You have to say that,” he protested.  His voice was weak, hoarse and bit breathy, but at least in this moment, he sounded happy.  “You’re one of those crazy folks who actually _likes_ me.  But it was the only way they'd give me the surgery to—”

She scowled, and opened her mouth, but Steve cut them both off.  “Tony,” he said very seriously, “I know I’m also one ‘those crazy folks,’ but as someone who was actually involved in tactical decision making, I hope you’ll listen to me anyway.”

Tony met his eyes, and nodded, affect solemn.  His hand was curled into a claw, now, digging hard into the cottony cover over his chest.

“I want you to keep playing along— that was a good call— but also, get off the drugs as soon as you can.”  He saw the moment that Tony understood that this was a reasoned, and not an emotional, response; his gaze sharpened, focussed through all the chemical and biological substances that were fighting to keep it scattered.  Winnie looked like she wanted to object, but, perhaps picking up on his tone, said nothing.  “You need to observe.  If you can, if they let you into other parts of the... compound?  Facility?  Whatever it is, get as much information about the layout as you can.”

Tony licked his bottom lip, and tilted his head just enough to make his hair fall ragged into his eyes.  “Yinsen— my fellow captive— he's got more freedom of movement than I do,” he offered tentatively.  “He can probably find out a lot for me.”

“Good.  Get a layout, and as much as you can, too, about guard rotations.  If you can figure out what their weaponry status is, that’s good to know, too.  And equipment.  Just, as much information as you can, because you don't want to be surprised while you're making your escape.  I don’t know if you can delay on making them their weapons...”

“Some.  Not much; they don’t trust me.”  Tony’s upper lip curled, revealing teeth.  “They shouldn’t.”

Steve grinned, fierce and proud.  “No, they should not.”  He hoped his pride and faith in Tony came through in his firm tone.  “Now, take me through your plan...”

 

* * *

 

He didn’t get as much time as he wanted to go over the plan with Tony, but then, a lot of it was stuff Tony had already come up with on his own— he had good instincts, and cleverness to match.  

Steve would never have come up with a suit of armor, but it would go a long way towards evening out the playing field, so he was definitely in favor.  Tony might have a chance, now.

Didn’t stop Steve from worrying, though.

 

* * *

 

This time, it wasn’t a full week before he saw Tony again; it was just under it, though.  Steve had camped out in the mansion, sitting on the stairs, in Tony’s bed, or downstairs, in the kitchen or entryway.  On the sixth day, his patience was rewarded with the sight of Tony trekking down the hall with his battery tucked under his arm.

Steve took one look at his face, and knew.  “This is it, then?” he asked.

Tony nodded, grim and pale over his bandages.  He was wearing some sort of baggy pants, not pajamas but similarly cut, and they were riding low on his hips.

Steve hated himself more than a little bit, just then.  He was the worst kind of scum to be noticing stuff like that at a time like this.

“It’ll start as soon as I wake up,” said Tony, oblivious to Steve’s distraction.  He grimaced.  “Which will be soon.  We’ll go before daybreak; the dark should make everything all that much more confusing.”

Steve bit down hard on his lip and all the things he wanted to say, scuffing a toe into the hardwood floors lining the hallway.

Tony looked at him, exhausted and without expression, for a full minute before jerking his head to the side.  His grip, Steve noticed, was hard and white around the battery.

“Come sit with me?” he asked.

Steve nodded, and followed.

 

* * *

 

They were back in Tony’s room.

The Cap-ghan was back on the bed.  It was, Steve couldn’t help but notice, unstained.

Tony set the battery down on his right— Steve was sitting beside him on his left, closer to the head of the bed— and then threw himself straight back down onto the mattress, casting his arms dramatically over his head before snagging the end of the Cap-ghan and tossing it over his chest.  He closed his eyes, exhausted, but only a moment passed before he picked his head up and cracking one eyelid open hopefully.  

Steve smiled, caught, half-turned to face him.  “Is it okay if I...?”  He gestured at the bed.  It was probably too vague to be a _useful_ gesture, but Tony seemed to get it, anyway.  

“Sure,” he said, faux-casual.

Cautiously, Steve eased himself down onto his right elbow, his body pivoting towards Tony’s.  Making sure that the Cap-ghan was wrapped around Tony, and that neither of them was going to kick the battery off the bed, he rocked back and forth until he was shifted, nestled in behind Tony— who was still pretending not to look, although he had shifted to his side in a perfect mirror of Steve’s own posture— and, ever so slowly, eased one arm over and around the other man.

Spooned together, albeit with a couple of inches between their bodies, they said nothing.  

They just... breathed.

It was _so_ peaceful, Steve reflected.  So perfect, quiet and safe.  If only they could have this every day for the rest of their lives...

 _You’d get bored,_ whispered Steve’s inner voice.  And yeah, okay— Steve knew he wasn’t the kind of guy that could just snuggle forever, but he sure wasn’t bored right now, was he?  Tony was warm beside him, and his breathing was steady and strong— a relief after the horrible condition he’d been in last week.  The sunlight— the sun was almost always up in the Dreamscape, and Steve had never understood why— rippled in through the window shades, casting pale-blue shadows over the scene where it passed through the folds, and the bed was very soft.  

And Tony was right next to him, warm and alive.

He could hear the steady in and out of Tony’s breathing, and it was the greatest comfort he could have asked for.  One breath after another, soft and sweet, and if Steve inched forward, he could put his nose right up against the blanket and smell Tony, too.  There was no liquor, this time; there was just the acrid scent of a body gone too long without a bath, the coppery tang of old blood.  The strong scent of metal, that only made sense:  Tony had, by his own account, been doing an awful lot of forging during the last week.  The much softer, more zinc-ish smell of rainwater, probably what Tony’s captors had been using for any washing up they’d allowed him.  And underneath all of it, the spicy, musky scent which was all Tony, making Steve’s heart pound hard and painful.

 _Ecstasy,_ Steve thought.   _From the Greek root, meaning, “To be outside of oneself.”_

Tony might be dead by this time tomorrow.

For now, though...  

He breathed.  In, and out...  The calm before the storm.

If Steve hadn’t been paying close attention, hadn’t been absorbed in the sound of steady breathing with his head so close to Tony’s that he was almost sicking his nose down the other man’s shirt, he would never have caught it.  He never would have heard the little hitch in Tony’s steady rhythm, or noticed the tiny shake in the other man’s shoulders.

It only made sense, Steve supposed.  The situation when Tony awoke might go any number of ways, but most of them would involve combat, pain and death and murder, and it was enough to scare any civilian.  

“It’s alright,” he said.  His voice came out mellow, even amused, he realized, much to his own surprise.

Tony froze.

Steve repeated himself.  “It’s alright.  If you’re going to cry...  Don’t worry about it.”  He tightened his arm around the strong chest spooned against him, and again, he could barely hear the small choking sound.  “Everyone gets scared before their first battle,” he assured him.  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Tony’s back stiffened.  “Ashamed.”

 _“Not_ ashamed,” Steve pointed out.  “I mean, it happens to everyone.”

The shoulders in front of him hunched, Tony’s head coming down to reveal a flash of pale neck between hairline and collar.  The he twisted like a cat, rolling back towards Steve, head canting on his neck so that Steve could have leaned forward and breathed against his mouth, if he wanted.

(He actually kind of _did_ want.  It didn’t exactly seem like the time, though.)

“Steve.”  

That was all Tony said, pausing until he knew he had Steve’s full attention.  Steve realized that his own breathing was also loud in the stillness of the bedroom, rushing in and out over his lips like gasps.  

“I’m not afraid, right now.”  

But Steve could hear the tension in Tony’s voice and see it in his shoulders.  He blinked, and said nothing.

Tony responded by shifting further around, then away from Steve to get slack in the battery leads when he couldn’t make it all the way.  Impatiently, he half-sat-up, pulling the battery until it was right behind him, settling down again now on his left side, so that he was face to face with Steve.  

Even in the rippling sunlight, Tony’s eyes were wide and dark, and his lower lip was redder and fuller than Steve had ever seen it— he must have been biting it, Steve realized.

Tony met his eyes, and smiled.  It was an almost-crazy smile, closed-mouthed and grim; the sort of smile you give when you’re about to walk out onto a limb and jump, and you have no idea what you’ll find when you land.  Tony’s breath, hissing now through his nose, was shaking with strong emotion, and Steve longed to be able to reach forward and touch Tony’s face.  Even just brushing his thumb along the cheek, to brush the dark hair of the beard backwards and forwards against the grain...

“I told you,” Tony said.  His voice was shaking, too, just like his breath had been.  The tremors of the too-tightly controlled.  “I _said,_ we needed to _talk.  About.  This,”_ and Steve understood with a feeling like falling that he’d had the whole wrong end of the stick.

 _Oh,_ he thought, his heart rate quadrupling in the span of a few seconds.

_Oh, **that.**_

Tony wasn’t afraid of the battle, tomorrow.  In fact, he was thinking about something else entirely...

Steve licked his lips, which were suddenly very dry.  Tony was...  he wanted...

_Oh, God, please._

The arm that Steve had thrown over Tony tightened without any conscious thought, pulling the other man towards him.   _I can’t touch him,_ Steve thought despairingly, but it didn’t matter, because he was damned well going to try, right now...

He could feel the air between them getting warmer and warmer as they moved, closer and closer, Tony edging in too, now, trembling breaths falling on Steve’s cheek like the brush of feathers, electric feathers that sent tingles all over him, and he was leaning in—

And then Tony stiffened, and cried out in pain and denial, a hand coming up to grasp uselessly at the blankets near Steve as, once again, he was ripped away by the waking world.

Only this time, it was possibly forever.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FEEL LIKE THIS IS A GOOD TIME TO REMIND YOU THAT TONY DOESN'T DIE IN THIS FIC! Seriously, I promise: we're going to resolve this, there will be a happy ending, _the porn is less than two chapters away!_ Also, comments and kudos make my nights and my days.  <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news, or bad news first? I'll start with the bad: I've burned through my buffer, and either there won't be a new chapter next week, or there won't be a new on the week after that. (I'm estimating two chapters in three weeks; we'll see how that goes, updates can be found on my [tumblr](http://chibisquirt.tumblr.com).) The good news? This chapter is over 8k (previous largest was 5k, I think). So, you know, lots of good content to tide you over!
> 
> Basically, I was determined not to leave you all for yet another chapter without at least getting some smoochies in first. :) <3
> 
> All grace and praise to Valmasy for betaing again; all errors, of course, are mine.
> 
> Oh, and because I'm a generally nice person... Have some [images](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/25/f1/7a/25f17a9f7b376f27a9484af5468c0c4b.jpg) of the [guy](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/626569320408035328/UdboFSpp.jpg) I used as my model for Tony. *halo*

It wasn’t nearly as long, this time, between Tony’s disappearance and when Steve got to see him.  Still _too_ long, but far less than the two weeks Tony had been gone the _last_ time Steve had almost kissed him.  

Instead, it was only a couple days before Tony appeared, still carrying the battery, at the top of the stairs.  Steve, sitting in the entryway while reading _Miss Butterworth and the Secret Soulmate,_ looked up, then threw himself to his feet like a stork coming to attention.   _“Tony!”_ he shouted, frozen in place for a minute as if he didn’t quite dare to run up to Tony, because if he did, it would mean discovering all over again that he couldn’t touch him— or worse, that he wasn’t there at all, and was instead a figment of Steve’s imagination.

But then Tony smiled, exhausted and pleased, and croaked, “Hey, Steve.”  

At that, Steve bounded forward, taking the stairs two at a time, book still held, forgotten, in his left hand.  He stopped in front of Tony, his toes only inches from Tony’s bare feet, an excited smile playing at his lips.  “Here, let me get that,” he said, reaching for the battery.  

Tony looked uncertain.  “You can’t drop it, I need it to not die in pain,” he said, eyes darting to the side.  “And what if you can’t... you know...”

“I could touch it before,” Steve shrugged, “And you can get your other arm up to catch it, just in case.”

Tony hesitated for one more second, but then nodded acknowledgement.  Steve didn’t know what it meant that he could touch the battery, but not anything else about Tony, but that continued to be the rule: the battery tumbled, safe, into his arms, and he followed as Tony led the way back upstairs to his room.

 

* * *

 

“Sooo,” said Tony as he sat on the edge of the bed again.  He watched Steve put the battery down on top of the blankets.  “Do you want the action adventure first, or the... the us stuff... first?”

Steve closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Dealer’s choice,” he said, faking calm.  

Tony nodded, only a little too quickly, and said, “Action bits, then.  The important part is this:  I’m out.”

“Of captivity?  Or out of danger?”

“Both, mostly.  We’re back on base.”

“You and Yinsen?”  Steve started to smile, happy for Tony, but it immediately became obvious that Yinsen didn’t make it;  Tony’s face closed off, and he looked away.  “Oh.  I’m sorry, Tony.  It’s hard, I know.”  Steve clenched his hands on the edge of the bed to keep from trying to touch.  

Tony nodded too quickly again, then changed the topic.  “I got out okay— the suit worked, by the way; worked beautifully, actually, I am in fact a genius— and then got lost.  Met a fellow American with a broken down chopper, and between his bird and my suit, we managed to get enough transport to make it to a base.”  He hesitated, but appeared to decide that that a sufficient summary.  “So now we’re safe, and I’m in a hospital bed, where I will be for about ten thousand years if these people have their way, or for about two days if I have mine.”

“Smart money sounds like it’s on two days, then.”  

Tony smiled like the northern ice cracking for spring.  “Yeah.  Two days, maybe three.  You know, if I’m feeling lazy.”

Steve smiled back, and, just like Tony had last time, he tossed his arms over his head and lay back.  He was hoping to tempt Tony to lie down beside him, but Tony got to his feet, instead.  

“Stay there,” he said absently, “This’ll just take a second...”  

For some reason, Steve’s heart decided that was its cue to take off, thumping and racing and setting up an _awful_ ache.  He obeyed, staying sprawled on his back, his legs bent over the edge of the mattress.  He couldn't see Tony from here, though; all he could get a glimpse of was the ceiling.  

He tried to puzzle it out by the shift of the mattress— Tony had definitely gotten up, and he had taken the battery with him, which meant almost nothing, only that he had gone more than three feet from his previous position...  He heard the shuffle of bare feet in plush carpet, the crack of a door— maybe a closet? — the soft susurrus of shifting fabric...

The Cap-ghan landed over Steve’s face.  

It didn’t take long for it to be lifted and flapped into falling more cleanly, ghosting down on top of him like a parachute, settling with a strange sort of comforting weight over his long, lanky body.  His face was completely covered, and Steve only had a second to wonder about that before the mass of the battery pinned the blanket beside him, and a warm, muscular form pushed him to the bed.

Steve choked and, humiliatingly, moaned.

He heard the catch of Tony’s breath, and a soft, barely-breathed “Oh—” before the Cap-ghan was flipped back from his face, and suddenly, Tony was looking down at him, face tender and fierce as if Steve were something precious.

Steve felt a warm smile spreading over his face, and, for once, did nothing to try to stop it.

“Tony...”

“I should’ve been destroyed,” Tony interrupted him, speaking fast.  His eyes were blue, blue, blue; blue as sky in summer, stronger and richer than the sky in winter, and warmer, too.  Lashes thicker than a dame’s framed them, and Steve couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to.  “I should’ve died in that cave, I should’ve _broken._ The fact that I didn’t...  There has to be a reason, Steve.”

He licked his lower lip, and this was a bad time, this was _such_ a bad time to be focusing on that, not when they were finally _talking_ about it, after all these years— _finally_ working it through.  But damn, it was hard to look away from Tony’s mouth...

He was speaking again.  “I kept thinking about you, Steve.  About what you would do, about what you would think of me if I didn't make it...  About what you would think if I made it by giving in.  I wanted—”  His head jerked back as he looked at the ceiling and swallowed.  "I wanted you to be _proud—”_

He broke off, gasping.

 _"Tony,"_ Steve repeated, wishing desperately he could cradle Tony's face in his hands.

Tony ducked his head down this time, instead of up, burying himself against the blanket covering Steve's chest.  Steve grabbed a handful of afghan to wrap around his palm and rested one hand, gentle and careful, on the back of Tony's head.

"You're safe now," he murmured.  "That's what you said, right?  You're back on base, and you're safe?"

Tony shrugged.  "Safe enough," he said carelessly.

Steve brushed his hand over the back of Tony's head restlessly.  "That's all I want for you, Tony.  Be safe, be happy, be loved..."

"Yeah, well, no one's going to do that last one but you."

Steve could feel his arms tighten compulsively, and forced them to relax.  "You have to promise you're not settling," he burst out.  "Promise me that you're not only doing this because you think you can't do better.  You _can,_ you’re _amazing—”_

Tony's shoulders tensed under his arms.  "I _know_ I can't do better," he said.  He raised his head again, finally, and Steve was trapped once more in the blue pull of his gaze.  He said, "I really don't think you know how extraordinary you are."

“But I’m _nothing!”_  Steve heard the echo of his voice come back after the shout, and winced and modulated his tone.  “Compared to you?  Tony, you _have_ to know how uneven this is.”

Silence spread and pooled through the room.

Tony’s mouth twitched.  

Steve, realizing what he had said, sighed.  “Go on, then.”  

Tony grinned, and god, if there was anything more beautiful than Tony looking at him intently from six inches away, it was Tony smiling at him gleefully from the same distance.  “There’s one thing on which we agree,” Tony said obediently, filling in the not-so-funny punchline.  “It is _very_ uneven.”

Steve sighed again, more pointedly, like a gust of wind washing over both of them.

Tony laughed, lighter than he’d been in weeks, and leaned his head back down on Steve’s chest.

 

* * *

 

It was _amazing._  

Tony was in heaven.  Here he was, with his soulmate, finally as close together as he’d always wanted them to be...  He could feel the slow, steady, rise and fall of Steve’s chest under him, could feel the place on the back of his neck where Steve’s warm breath stirred the dark curls.  It was impossible to sleep in the Dreamscape, but it _was_ possible to sink into a meditative trance, and, as they lay there, wrapped together in the sunlight, time seemed to slow down, as rich and as thick as honey coating a spoon.

 

* * *

 

It took a while, but eventually, Steve poked him in the blanket.  Tony said nothing, just nuzzled his head further down into Steve’s chest.

Steve poked him again.  

“This better be good,” Tony said.  His voice sounded muzzy and drugged to his own ears, and he smiled into the blanket.  It really was ridiculously soft; what had Jarvis made it out of, chenille?  “I’m busy doing something very important.”

Steve snorted softly underneath him.  “Sure,” he agreed.  Absently, one long-fingered hand brushed up and down Tony’s side, an affectionate gesture completely free of artifice.  “But important this:  I think we should go on some dates.”

Tony thought about it, idly kicking one ankle where it hung over the edge of the bed.  “Because really, we don’t know each other at all,” he said eventually.  

He had faith that Steve would catch the sarcasm; Steve was good like that.

Steve did catch it, and responded by hitting Tony with a pillow.  “I’m serious.”  His eyes were hazy and soft, but his mouth was stubborn.  “I’ve been thinking about it.  My mama would be ashamed of me if I never even took my soulmate on a date, and I don’t see that changing too much, just because you aren’t a lady.”

Tony shifted, bringing his hands to right under his head and resting his chin on them.  “Hmmm.”

Something flashed over Steve’s face, and he looked away.

That was obviously _completely_ unacceptable.  “What?” Tony asked.  “No, hey, Steve— what was that?”

“Nothing.”  But he wasn’t making eye contact anymore.

“Wha-a-a-at?” Tony tried to sound like the whiny kid brother he’d never had.  “Steve?  C’mon, tell me.”  

Steve was blushing, a faint pink stinging his cheeks.  “I just— you’re not _embarrassed,_ are you?  I know you said it’s supposed to be different these days, with men being— you know.  No one just assumes you’re platonics, these days, right?  It’s not going to cause you trouble?”

Tony snorted.  “It might,” he said, “but I’ve got plenty of bigger fish to fry, quite frankly.  People are going to be upset enough about the rest of what I’m doing, without getting into my sex life.  Or lack thereof.”

Steve looked away again as the blush deepened and spread (charmingly).  “Hopefully not _too_ lack thereof,” he said.  

Tony could feel the delighted smile spreading over his face.  Slowly, deliberately— unseen by Steve, who still had his head turned away— he leaned forward and down, biting Steve’s clavicle through the afghan.  

He got wool fibers in his mouth, but it was worth it for the way Steve cried out and threw his head back.

Which was just— “You know that’s like an engraved invitation, right?” Tony asked, leaning forward enough that he could hover his mouth over Steve’s neck.  “I mean, you give me something like that, of course I’m going to—”  He breathed out, heavy and deliberate, onto the pale, delicate skin, and was rewarded when Steve shuddered underneath him at the touch of the warm air.  His head pressed back further into the mattress.

“God, Tony—!”

Tony chuckled and breathed out heavy again, then switched it up, aiming a cool stream of air across the front of the throat.  

Steve jerked up, and Tony pulled back quickly to avoid passing through him— which wasn’t painful, but _was_ very disconcerting— tumbling off to the side until his back came up against the battery.  “Okay there, Steve?”

Steve sat up, panting, and didn’t answer.

Tony frowned.  “Hey, you _are_ okay, right?  I mean, that was...  Wasn’t too much of anything?”

Steve gave a convulsive, all-over shiver, and then looked up and shook his head.  “Not too much, no, but...  If you’d kept going, it _would_ have been too much.”  He was blushing again.  “If you know what I mean.”

Tony felt the frown change to another delighted smile.  “I know exactly what you mean,” he said intently, and watched Steve bite his lip at the tone.  “You know, we still haven’t come up with a way for me to be able to really kiss you.  Let’s work on that, hmm?”

“Oh, heavens,” Steve said.  He looked faint, but the good kind of faint.  “If you could do that, then I would _definitely_ have a... a problem.”  He was pink all the way down to his neck, now.

Tony sat up so that he could speak directly into Steve’s ear.  “When you say _problem,”_ he started, voice low because Steve seemed to like it that way, “Do you mean...”  

He ran his hand up Steve’s blanket-covered leg to his hip, and Steve let out a whine.  

“You know,” Tony observed, “I think I would like to be able to do more than just kiss you...”

Steve threw himself back down on the bed again, raising his arms in front of himself to cover his eyes.  Tony gave him a minute; he looked pretty overwhelmed.  

Eventually, Steve uncovered his face and peeked up at Tony cautiously.

Tony gave him a charming grin.

Steve relaxed and rolled his eyes.  “Okay, so you _do_ know how devastating you are,” he said.  “You with your sultry voice and dangerous mouth and your— your _muscles—”_ Steve must have noticed that his voice had started to climb in pitch, because he brought it down again.  “You know, you could absolutely _destroy_ me.  You do know that, right, Tony?”

Tony laughed, thrilled with his beautiful, sensitive, _responsive_ soulmate— who apparently was just as enamoured with _him,_ and wasn’t that the world’s most astonishing miracle?  “I want to use a line here, something about us both destroying each other in the most wonderful of ways—”

Steve whimpered.

“ — but I think you’re being serious here, so I’ll do the same.  I get the impression you haven’t... been with... a whole lot of people?”

Steve looked away.  "Once or twice,” he said, “but it wasn’t like— it wasn’t anybody— I mean—”  He paused, and deliberately re-focused on Tony.  “There’s never been anybody I was in love with,” he said, “and definitely never anybody like you.”

Tony felt a faint prickling go through him, and squeezed Steve’s arm where it lay under the blanket still.  “I love you, too,” he said, voice rough, then rushed out, “Dates.  Yes.  Next time?”

The haze of confusion cleared from Steve’s eyes as he realized what was about to happen.  “Oh!  Yes.  Next time— I’ll set things up.”

Tony smiled, and leaned forward just far enough to hover his mouth over Steve’s, breathing out, hot and wet, once again— the ghost of a kiss.

A minute later, he woke up, aware once again of the sounds of a military base bustling around him.

 

* * *

 

If he’d thought he would get to relax once he got home, he was in for a rude surprise.  Everyone was very happy to see him— Jarvis hugged him, Pepper cried— but there was also a hell of a lot of paperwork to file when you came back from the dead, and before he could do _that,_ Tony had had to rebuild the armor into a smaller chestpiece, something he could wear under his clothes to keep his magnets powered.  He stayed up late and got up early, over and over again, barely managing to control the tailspin his company had sailed into due to rumors of his demise.  

He didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until he found himself in the Dreamscape Mansion and panicked.  He couldn’t be at home, he couldn't stay in bed, he had to get to work—!

Oh.

Oh, right.  Sleep.

That was important, too.

“Shit.”  He ran one shaking hand through his hair.  “I wonder how much of the work I’ve done in the last day is actually even usable?”

Well, no way to know for right now.  And— he flushed— he had a date with Steve to look forward to.   He swung his legs out of bed— he was lying on top of the covers— and found himself pulled up short.

He was still tied to the car battery.  The leads were longer now, but still protruded from the bottom of his shirt.

“What the _hell?”_ he asked aloud, staring at it.  

The chestplate had been the _first_ thing he made when he got home.  It had been done for over a week, and yes, those first couple days had required significant refinements, but Tony now wore it continuously under his clothes.  Not to mention, he could go without it for a few minutes at a time, as he had done at the military hospital to preserve his secret.  He was determined that no one become aware of his condition, because he knew perfectly well what the public reaction would be...

...which was why it was especially intolerable that he still be tied to the damned battery in the Dreamscape!  

“You know you’re obsolete, right?” he asked it.  “I’ve got a much better system, now.  Smaller, more portable, fits under my clothes...   _Doesn’t weigh forty pounds...”_

The battery neither moved nor disappeared:  apparently, in the Dreamscape, at least, he was stuck with it.

“You don’t even make _sense,”_ he told it, exasperated.  A quick rub at his sternum revealed that, yes, he had the original post-surgery setup:  no armor, no chest plate, just the leads.  “The rules of the Dreamscape say that you should only be appearing if I’m convinced you’re real.  Here I am, convinced you’re _not_ real, and yet there you are.  And why is it _Steve_ can hold you, anyway?” he added, tilting his head as he considered the puzzle, now less bitching out the battery than he was just generally pondering.  “That part confused me last time, too.”

He chewed his lip and picked up the battery as he thought about it.

Steve could only touch things that were part of the Dreamscape, and not things that were part of the Dreamers (as an early text on the topic had termed them).  

Steve sometimes changed his clothes— Tony had noticed that Steve typically had a jacket, or even a coat, during winter months, but not during summer— but it was an open question whether or not Steve was aware of this; certainly, Tony had never pointed it out.  And he knew, through the occasional misjudged distance or clumsiness, that Steve’s mysteriously-appearing-jacket was just as permeable to other Dreamers as the suspenders.

(God, those _damned_ suspenders...  Tony was going to take them off with his _teeth,_ one of these days...)

He pulled an old duffel bag out of the closet and slid the battery into it, pulling the zip until it was only just open around the leads.  If Steve couldn’t touch Dreamers, but could touch the battery (not the leads, Tony remembered), it implied that the battery wasn’t there as part of Tony, but as part of the Dreamscape.

He wasn’t exactly sure what that _meant,_ though...

And it wasn’t like there weren’t exceptions to that rule, either.  Chairs, for example, were definitely part of the ‘Scape, but Steve remained completely unable to sit in them.  

About to leave the room, Tony paused, and grabbed a pair of black leather driving gloves out of the drawer.   Nothing wrong with a little experiment, was there?

 

* * *

 

He found Steve in the library again, near enough to the main stairs that he had to have been waiting for Tony.  “Hey,” he said, jerking his head at the door.  “Wanna blow this popsicle stand?”

Steve smiled.

Steve _had been_ smiling, for years, whenever he saw Tony.  It was one of the things that Tony treasured about him; he was always happy to see him, even though, as Tony would have been the first to tell you, Tony really wasn’t that great of a soulmate.  Steve liked him anyway, though, and always lit up when they met.

But, on the other hand, this was the first time Tony had seen him blush at the same time.

It was _fucking adorable,_ was what it was.

They headed out into the street, and Steve turned south.  “Wait, wait, wait,” Tony said.  “I have a proposition.”

Steve, deliciously, turned _bright red._

“Not that kind of proposition!” Tony blurted.  “I mean.  Unless you would say ‘yes’ to that.  But, uh...  I meant something else.”

Steve grinned self-consciously.  “Go on,” he said.

It was not fair that a guy who was actually _taller_ than Tony could still manage to look up at him from under his lashes.  

“So, coming back from the dead is apparently a hassle,” started Tony, “and I have been working very long days and will continue to do so for the next three weeks.  Which isn’t great, but it beats _actually_ being dead.  On the other hand, it does mean that whatever we do on our date has a high probability of getting interrupted by my alarm clock.”

“Oh,” said Steve.

“Right.  So my idea is this:  reschedule the date for three weeks from now, when we will actually have a decent amount of time.”

Steve looked disappointed.  “I guess that’s okay...”

“And, _in the meantime,_ since I know you don’t want to just make out...”  

He was teasing.  Mostly teasing.  He knew Steve would feel like he was taking advantage if they started with sex and _then_ went on dates; the order of how they did things was important to him.  

Not that Tony would object if Steve changed his mind...

“...I thought we might explore some of the limits of your ghostly condition.  In my lab.  Instead.”

Tony watched out of the corner of his eyes, but he needn’t have worried:  Steve was happy to take him up on the offer.

 

* * *

 

“No, this way.”  Steve had automatically turned towards the stairs when they entered the house, but now he pivoted and followed Tony through to the library.  “So, we _could_ do this in the space upstairs,” Tony explained.  “I thought you might be more comfortable in the lab, though.  It’s more formal, and things between us right now...”

“The formality will keep us focused,” Steve agreed, smiling a little.

“Right.”  Tony definitely had mixed feelings about that!  “So down here—”  The elevator doors opened with perfect timing.  “ — is the lab area.  We have Path labs— Pathology, I mean; medical stuff— down here too, but my main focus is electronics— robots, computers, you name it.  I thought we could do a few basic tests.  Nothing fancy.”  He hit Steve with his most charming smile, and Steve looked back tolerantly.  

“Is this the part when you tell me what’s in the duffel?” he asked.  

Tony felt his face tighten.  “What’s in the duffel is the reason I wanted to do these tests,” he said.  When he set it down on the bench— leaving plenty of space for Steve to hop up, since the only other place to sit was the chairs Steve couldn’t use— the duffel landed with a loud _thunk!_ Tony put his hand on it, protectively, and then started to pull the zip.  “This really shouldn’t be here, anymore.”

He explained about the chestplate, and how the battery was last week’s model.  “People have done tests on the Dreamscape before; there’s a whole field of science devoted to it, and Winnie and I bond regularly over what this month’s journals have to say.  But there’s a lot we _don’t_ know, too.

“For example— cognition forms the basis of the ‘Scape’s layout, we _know_ that.  It doesn’t reflect reality because it’s _objective,_ it reflects it because the ‘Scape is a _shared subjective._ But do I have a battery right now because of something _I_ believe about myself, or because of something _the rest of the world_ believes about me?”

“Or some unknown third reason,” Steve pointed out, making himself comfortable by crossing one ankle over the opposite knee.  He was tall and skinny enough, it made him look almost like a stork, and Tony turned away and pretended to grab something to hide the twitching of his mouth.  “You know, I’m impressed, Tony.  I really thought this was a pretext.”

A hot flush rose on the back of Tony’s neck.  “I’m not _just_ a horn-dog,” he defended.  “I do have _some_ other interests.”

“I know that.  It’s just, this is the first time I’ve really seen you indulge, I guess.  You haven’t really been doing that too much, around me, anyway.”

“No lab.”  He pulled a spare lab book out of the supply cupboard against the opposite wall.  In his real lab, he used a computer for all his notes, but he wanted to hand-write them so he could transfer them more accurately when he woke up; there was already going to be significant data degradation from the haziness of sleep.  He never had remembered his dreams too clearly.  “And most people...  Most people don’t think it’s very interesting to watch this stuff.”

He’d seen an awful lot of eyes glaze over through the years, starting with his mother’s.

“Well, I may not follow what you’re doing, too well, but I’m game to watch you do it,” said Steve, his voice firm and warm.  “But you’re missing the obvious,” he added, teasing.

“Yeah?”  Tony’s blush had finally faded enough that he could return to the bench and drop the lab book off, along with a clipboard, goggles, pens-not-pencils (as one of his instructors at MIT had always said it, combined into one smooshed-together word), plain white paper, non-latex gloves, a lab coat (always on hand but never, until this moment, utilized), 30 milliliters of ethanol in a 200 milliliter beaker, green dye (food coloring, but not because the dye from the regular lab was missing; he’d just always used food coloring there, too),  and scissors.  “This should get us started.  What’s the obvious?”

Steve’s eyebrows were up.  “I thought it was a pretext,” he said, “and I followed you down here, anyway.”

Tony felt his pulse kick up to twice its normal speed.  Suddenly, his mouth felt very dry, his head very light.  

He looked wildly down at his hands for a distraction.  “...Do you think I can die from consumption of poison if it’s done in the Dreamscape?  Because ethanol is basically vodka, but it’s lab vodka, so it’s probably not safe for consumption—”

_“Don’t drink it!”_

 

* * *

 

The lab book now read:  

> **GLOVE TESTS**
> 
> T + Nitrile (worn, control):  liquid remains on surface
> 
> S + Nitrile (worn):  Liquid passes through to blotter
> 
> S + Nitrile (held):  Liquid beads on surface of glove
> 
> S + leather (worn):  Liquid passes through to blotter
> 
> S + leather (held):  Liquid beads on surface of glove
> 
> S + leather (worn) + nitrile (held):  Liquid beads on surface of nitrile
> 
> S + leather (worn) + nitrile (worn exterior to leather):  Liquid passes through to blotter

“So what does this mean?” Steve asked him.

Tony shook his head glumly.  “It means that none of this makes sense, that’s what it means.”  He tapped the book.  “It seems like, as soon as you put the glove _on,_ it becomes part of your... ghostiness... somehow.”

Steve raised his eyebrows.  “And then what does _that_ mean?”

“Well, for one thing...”  Tony tossed the pen-not-pencil into the seam of the lab book and pouted.  “...It means that half of my ideas for _after_ the dates aren’t going to work very well, anyway.”

He was _never_ going to get tired of watching Steve blush.

 

* * *

 

He woke up not long after that, his dreams receding to the slurry haze they assumed in the waking world.  Something about Steve, and the lab...?  Maybe he’d head to the sub-basement; he would be able to remember better from inside there.

In the meantime, there was testing on the armor to do, and paperwork for the company.  And maybe, if he got everything done, he could attend that tennis match his old friend Joanna had invited him to.  

That would be nice.

 

* * *

 

“Here, spit on this.”  

“Tony, _what?”_

“Relax!  It’s paper!  Just— hock a loogie— right on that indented spot, there— Yeah.”

“What exactly are you testing me _for?”_  Steve was looking at him with no small portion of alarm.

“Oh, that was just phase one.  The next step involves finding out whether you can spit on other _people—”_

_“No, Tony!”_

 

* * *

 

This time when they entered the dream-mansion, he turned the other way, heading towards the main elevator.  “This way.  There’s...  There’s something I want to show you.”

He felt unaccountably nervous as he steered Steve to the right, as he entered in the code that would allow access to the _other_ part of the sub-basement.  He paused in front of the locked, thick-paneled door, leaning his head against the panels, breathing in and out.  There should be a faint scent of metal, he thought, imagining the way it would sting his nostrils.  The faintest scent of steel, and of ozone...

He could just barely smell it, now.  He unlocked the room.  

“Take a look,” he said, trying to affect an air of nonchalance.  

Steve edged into the room, and looked up at the armor on its mount in the center.  His jaw dropped.  

The thing was, Tony hadn’t been able to set it down— even before he decided to become a superhero.  He had kept going back, making improvements, tweaking this, cutting the mass on that, until the armor— which he had originally intended to sell commercially— was so elaborate and powerful that he could never produce them on any kind of a profitable scale, even if he were able to stomach the idea of somebody reverse-engineering it.  The upshot was that by now, the armor looked pretty darned impressive, if he did say so himself.  “I made the original one out of multi-folded steel,” he told Steve, pausing to worry his lip between his teeth, “but I was working with some pretty basic materials in the cave, and I didn’t have access to professional-level fabrication units, of course.  Here, I’ve replaced the steel with an alloy, increases toughness, improves durability, weighs a little less so I get more power out of my hydraulics...  

“If you look here—”  He pulled the front of the armor down, then paused.  “Actually, _can_ you...?”  

Steve held out his hands, and, as they both held their breaths, Tony placed the chestplate into his grasp.  Steve flexed his fingers, and took the weight.

“That is not fu-freaking fair, by the way,” Tony told him.  “There is no way armor shouldn’t count as clothing, but you can hold the armor just fine; put you in gloves, though...  I don’t get it.”

Steve shrugged.  “I’m not _wearing_ this armor; I could hold the gloves alright.”

“Why does that even matter, though?  At any rate, here:  see the interlock there?  That connects to my—”  His fingers dug into his chest where the leads snuck down towards the duffel, still hanging off his left shoulder.  “It holds a pretty good charge, enough to power the suit for days if I’m not being too active, and of course it’ll power me, too, for the same amount of time.  If anyone else were to wear the suit—”  Tony was already setting up a fake ID for the bodyguard he was going to “hire” to protect him.  “ — this part sticking out here can just fold down.”  He tucked the plug in with one finger, and it did, in fact, snap into folded position.  

“Wow,” Steve said quietly.  “It’s beautiful, Tony.”  He looked up at the suit again.  “I can’t believe— you made this in a _cave?”_

“Well, not just like this,” he admitted.  

He told Steve about the obsession, about how he couldn’t leave it alone.  “I had to keep making it better, so...  I did.”  

Now came the hard part.

“Last week...  You know, I wasn’t even looking for trouble, was the thing...”  He recounted how he had stopped the group of thieves from making off with his designs.  “And I know the world needs it— needs someone to step in and stop it when things go wrong.  I mean, imagine— imagine if I’d had the armor on 9/11?  Oh— that was when the World Trade Center attacks occurred.  I could’ve stopped that second plane, or at least gotten some people out...”  

Steve poked him sharply with the edge of the breastplate.  

Tony smiled gratefully over at him.  “Yeah, I know.  But still!  So now the plan is— This is why I’m telling you, by the way; maybe you can give me advice, or something— The plan is, I’m gonna be a superhero.”  

He winced.

“Only, pretend I said that in a way that doesn’t sound totally pretentious.”

Steve laughed.  “I think it sounds fine, Tony.”  He bit his lip, and traced over the place on the chestplate where it would hook into Tony’s socket.  “I hate— well, you know.  I hate that you have to— or at least _feel_ you have to— not that you’re wrong, I mean, that attack is a great example— oh, _darn_ it!” 

“Such strong language, Steven.”  Tony couldn’t help smiling, half as a tease, half from relief that Steve wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it.  “There have been other things, too.  There was this creature, they’re calling it the Hulk... There was this whale-looking thing that attacked New York...  The world is getting weirder, Steve.  Someone’s got to look out for the normal folks.”  Tony gave a short, bitter laugh.  “And let’s face it:  I’ve never been normal.”

“No, you haven’t.  But you’re _better,”_ Steve insisted.

“Yeah, sure; okay.  Anyway!  This will allow me to... to take on the things that threaten... people.  You know...”  He stopped, and restarted.  “Did they have the phrase, ‘what would Jesus do?’ in your time?”

Steve blinked.  “It was a sentence that someone could speak, I guess, but if you’re saying it’s an expression now, then no, I don’t think so.”

“Well, I _am_ saying it’s a expression now— for better or worse— and I always had my own version.”  Tony smiled sharply again.  “What would _Captain America_ do?”

Steve buried his head in his hands.

“And I know— I _know—_ he would have done this,” Tony insisted.  “He would have done whatever it took to protect the little people against...  against anything or anyone who would hurt them, just because they can.”

Steve made a very small squeaking sound into his hands, which Tony decided to interpret as agreement.  

“He always did what was right,” Tony said.  “And that’s...  This is...”  He waved his hands in frustration at the failure of words.  “I’m not proud of who I used to be— that’s something else I was thinking about a lot, in captivity.  I’m not proud of who I was, but I also have the power to be better.  To do more.  And this...”  He touched one golden metal arm proprietorially.  “...this is a way for me to do that.”

With gentle hands, Steve hung the breastplate back on its hooks.  “I won’t tell you not to— I try not to be a hypocrite, for one thing—”

Tony abruptly remembered how Steve had died:  in a self-sacrificial mission during the War.

“ — but, Tony...  Stay safe, okay?  For me?  I can’t...  I can’t _lose_ you, Tony.”  Steve bowed his head, not making eye contact, as if ashamed of the depth of his feeling.  “You’re important to me.  You matter.  And I can’t—”  He shuddered.  “I can’t face all those years alone; not again.  Please.”

Tony bit his lip.  “Yeah,” he agreed, subdued.  “I hear you, Steve.  I can’t promise that I’ll make it, but...  I’ll do my best.”

Steve nodded, jaw clenched, and Tony changed the subject by showing him the repulsors.

 

* * *

 

Three weeks later, Tony hit the Dreamscape with a bounce in his step.  By the time he was out in the street, battery carried in an old, faded-blue backpack, Steve was already there to meet him.  

“I lay down tonight with a full night’s sleep scheduled, and no alarm to go off in the morning,” Tony greeted him, bouncing excitedly on his toes.  “Come on; let’s go on a date.”

Steve matched his grin and jerked his head southward.  “Let’s go, then!  It’s a few blocks this way, about seven— I hope that’s not too many?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine; the pack distributes the weight evenly, anyway.”

“Come on, then!”

Steve led the way, long legs eating up the distance, as Tony told him about the strange and bizarre things that had been happening in his life.  Steve hadn’t really heard much about Rhodes, yet, and Tony filled in the blanks for him as they walked along the edge of Central Park.  

“Okay, one more block, this way— Winnie told me about this place; she keeps a list, actually.”

“A list?”

“Yeah, of businesses that are open in the Dreamscape.  You may have seen it; she keeps it at the reference desk in the real-life library.”

“Oh.  No, I haven’t seen it; and if I look now, will I get spoiled for our _next_ date?”

“Well...  Probably.  But I think you’ll be okay with that one, regardless.”  Steve tipped his head to the side, blushing. “It’s a little silly, our next date, but I can’t imagine anyone not liking it.  And I didn’t want to risk doing something you wouldn’t like.”

“Well, that begs the question of what we’re doing right now, then,” Tony teased.

“Um.  Eating?”

“A dinner date?”  Tony’s smile widened.  “Are there flowers and candles?”

“Nah.  I checked, but none of the places close enough to walk, and open in the ‘Scape, were fancy like that.”  Steve ducked his head.  “I would have liked to have done something nice for you, but...”

“It’s okay,” Tony said hastily.  “It doesn’t have to be— I didn’t mean—”  

But Steve was already smiling and waving it off.

“Anyway, this place is nice.  Not fancy, but... it’s clean, and the food seems fine.  And the couple who runs it— in the real world, I mean— they’re not here; their ‘Scape is over in China somewhere, I think. But their daughter, she’s going to med school at Cornell, and she thinks she’s probably going to meet her soulmate in the restaurant because that’s where she enters the ‘Scape.  So the restaurant is always ready for business, but it’s just...  abandoned.  Sue’s the only one who’s ever there, and she promised to clear out when she sees me with you.”

Tony heard the jingle of brass bells as Steve pulled open the door, and gave Steve a side-eye.  He was definitely blushing again.  “So we can have our dinner date in private?”  

“Kind of...  Yeah.  Is that— is that okay?”

Tony turned in the middle of passing under Steve’s arm, pivoting on one foot so that he ended up right in front of Steve, a hair’s breadth from being pressed against him, but still not quite touching him.  He leaned his head in carefully, putting his lips right next to Steve’s ear so that his breath would tickle the baby-fine hairs there.  “Don’t worry,” he murmured, “It’s great, Steve; I’m looking forward to it.”  

And then he exhaled, warm and hot, against the pale column of Steve’s neck.

Steve gave a convulsive, full-body shudder, and Tony grinned and hopped back through the door.

 

* * *

 

The restaurant was a buffet, which explained why Steve had thought they were going to get food with no staff in the place, and it was really pretty tasty.  All the food was hot and fresh (despite the impossibility of that second one), and while the sauces _were_ mostly pretty sweet, they weren’t _just_ sweet, not the way a lot of cheap Chinese food was— or at least the ones Tony had tried.  But here, in this Dreamscape impossibility, the wontons were delicate, the egg rolls crispy, and all in all, Tony made a mental note to try the place in the real world to see if it lived up to its Dreamscape precedent.  

Plus, he got to show Steve how to use chopsticks, which, considering he couldn’t touch the other man’s hands, had been _hilarious._

“I can’t believe you can’t pick up a _fork,”_ Tony said, scrunching up his nose trying to make sense of it.   _“It’s a fork.”_

“I know.”  Steve was trying hard not to sulk, but it was clear he found this much less amusing than Tony did.  

“Physics, even Dreamscape physics, shouldn’t actually work that way.” 

“I _know.”_

Steve was also finding it less _interesting_ than Tony did, but then, Steve almost never was as fascinated by his— heh— ghastly condition as Tony was.  

Eventually, it turned out that Steve could handle a knife just fine, and a spoon most of the time, but every time he went to grasp a fork, his hand went straight through.  “I don’t really _need_ to eat,” Steve had shrugged, “And I was almost never around food, so it didn’t really matter to me.”

“But _just forks,_ Steve?!”

They wound up wandering into the kitchen to eat, once Tony had loaded their plates up (the serving spoons didn’t like Steve, either.)  They had been all set to sit in one of the boothes by the window when Steve’s face fell, remembering.  “I can’t sit in a chair,” he said in a small voice, but Tony was absolutely determined that it was going to be a good date.  

“No problem; grab that little statue, would you?”  And then he led the way into the stainless-steel kitchen and hopped up on the center island, kicking his legs like a kid and shooting Steve a triumphant look.  So then they ate sitting on a counter with an out-of-place statue of a roly-poly buddha beaming at them, and they actually had a really great time.

It was...  It was actually really _nice,_ Tony thought in some bemusement.  

He poked his chopsticks into the scraps on his plate as his stomach turned over.  It wasn’t, he realized, nausea, or overeating.

It was _exhilaration._  

He couldn’t remember the last time _someone else_ had taken _him_ on a date; mostly, it seemed to be other way around.  Hell, maybe it had never happened!  And definitely, this was the first time he had ever been to a Chinese buffet on a date— which was a shame, because it turned out he really liked it.  And they were there Steve loved the food, either— Steve liked it well enough, but he obviously wasn’t in love with it.  No, this was just because Steve wanted to do something nice for Tony.

Which no one had ever done before.

“I love you,” Tony blurted, a non-sequitur since his previous sentence had been an explanation of how the repulsors worked.  He bit his tongue, as surprised as Steve looked.

He... He actually hadn’t meant to say that.  

He wasn’t taking it back, either, though, and especially not when Steve’s smile looked like... like the sound of seagulls after a month in a cave felt.  

“I love you, too,” Steve said, eyes crinkling at the corners.  He bit his lip and looked at the table, then tossed his napkin next to his plate.  “You wanna wash up and get out of here?”

 _“Yes,”_ Tony said fervently, thinking about what exactly he could use once they made it back to the mansion.

He probably should have paid more attention to Steve’s actual words, because it turned out, Steve didn’t view being in the Dreamscape as an adequate excuse not to do dishes.  “They have a dishwasher,” Tony pointed out.

“I’m not making some other guy clean up after me, even if he _were_ here, which he’s not.”  Steve set his jaw.

“No, I mean a _dishwasher._ Like, a dishwashing machine.  Look, here—”  Tony used the backpack to shove Steve out of the way, loaded their plates and glasses onto one of the square beige racks, and sent it into the gaping silver maw of the thing.  He also, manfully, didn’t laugh when Steve jerked back at the sound and misting water when the washer jerked to life.  “I figure we can let them air dry when the get to the other end, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“So we’re done here.  Come on—”

Tony froze, stopping in his tracks and feeling suddenly like an idiot.  

He had some in the mansion, he knew; there _had_ to be, in the kitchen if nothing else.  And he’d just spent half an hour staring at the damned thing.  How had he _missed_ it?

“Tony?”

“Steve...”  Tony’s voice sounded dreamy to his own ears, and crossed his arms to hide an excited shiver without looking away from the shelf five feet up the far wall.  “Do you know what I’m looking at?”

Steve turned, just inside Tony’s peripheral vision, looking back and forth between Tony and the wall in bafflement.  “...Dry goods?”

Tony shook his head, and started walking.  “Cling wrap,” he corrected.  He couldn’t exactly see his own face, but he was pretty sure he was grinning like a Batman villain.  “Steve, I’m going to need you to come here now, please.”

Steve could move with astonishing quietness when he wanted to, but he wasn’t bothering now; Tony didn’t have to look up to track his progress across the kitchen.  The dishwasher spat out the lone, near-empty rack of plates, but the automatic sensor must not have been working, because the machine kept working, sudsing nothing with a lot of steam and white noise behind them.

“What is it?” Steve asked, curious.

“Cling wrap,” Tony repeated.  “It’s plastic, generally clear, although I think you can get it in fancy colors for the holidays...  Sticks to itself.  And to everything else, honestly.  Here, look—”  He pulled off a sheet, tearing it on the aluminum edge, and stuck it to Steve.  The plastic happily adhered to Steve’s suspender buckles.  “See?”

“Oh.”  Steve poked it.  “So why were you so—?”

Tony flipped the sheet up over Steve’s mouth, leaned in, and kissed him.  

A lone, tiny part of his brain screamed, _oh, my god, you’re actually doing it!,_ and then he focused in.  

Steve’s mouth was soft, he noticed immediately.  He had honestly been expecting that; Steve’s mouth _looked_ soft.  But it was also firm— hard, even, for a moment, until Steve realized what was happening and relaxed— and then it was just... nice.  Such an inane word for it, but Tony would stand by it:  pressure, and the smell of _Steve_ (plain soap and powder, but also, for some reason, something like leather and metal; kevlar?  But that didn’t make sense...), and then Steve’s mouth moved under his like Steve was trying to kiss him back, and it went from _nice_ to _amazing_ by way of his _dick_ and Tony just about had a heart attack.  

He yanked his head back.  “Oh my god.  Okay, this is okay, we can do this—”

 _“Tony!”_ Another time, Tony resolved to think about how completely ridiculous Steve looked with cling wrap over his lower face like a particularly ineffective bandanna, but for now he was a little more focused on Steve’s _eyes,_ on the burn in them and the desperation in them, and there was _no way in Hell_ Tony was going to leave things like this.

“Okay!  Okay.  Hold still.  Steve, I need you to—”  

He waited until Steve had comprehended the slurry of words pouring out of Tony’s mouth, and then Steve went _almost_ entirely still, just barely vibrating with need and impatience.  Carefully, Tony pulled off another sheet of cling wrap, pressing it into Steve’s old linen shirt, and then used the far end to turn him by the shoulder.  He spun him around and around, the plastic coating his entire torso, upper arms pinned to his chest.  (Steve raised them before they did the abdomen.)  Then he said, “Here, sit here—” and guided him onto the counter, and then Tony was between Steve’s knees, and then they were kissing again.

It was strange, both perfect and _not enough_ at the same time.  The plastic was slick and obscene in his mouth, but tasteless and weirdly dry.  It also was a barrier; Tony tried to slip his tongue into Steve’s mouth, but of course, with the cling wrap there, it was impossible.  Frustration spiked in Tony’s stomach, and Steve was the first to pull back, this time.  “Mmf, hold on—”  He tugged the plastic away from his face, letting it resettle more gently.  “Better?”

Tony licked his lips— Steve made a noise— and then Tony reached up, cautiously touching one finger to Steve’s plastic-covered lips.  “Open up,” he said, almost failing to recognize his own voice because it was so husky and crazed.  

Steve whimpered, and, obediently, opened his mouth.

(Some day, hopefully some day _soon,_ Tony was going to have the _other_ kind of dream about Steve, all wrapped up and obediently opening his mouth for him...)

“Oh, fuck,” Tony said.  He pushed his thumb into Steve’s mouth— the desperately fast breathing Steve was doing through his nose was _not helping—_ and then a finger, then two fingers, bringing just enough cling wrap inside with them that there was some slack.  Steve’s eyes were totally dark, and hot with desire— Tony felt the low kick of that in his stomach— and he leaned forward just enough to take Tony’s fingers in further, to the first knuckle.  

And then he sucked, wrapping his tongue up and around them, _stroking_ them.

“Oh, _fuck,”_ Tony repeated, groaning.  He leaned in and bit Steve on the chin— Steve whined— and then pulled his fingers out, replacing them with his mouth once again.  

It was _so good;_ Steve gave as good as he got, biting at Tony’s lips, sucking at the tongue Tony slipped into the slack saran wrap between them...  Tony could barely breathe; it was as if the whole world was spinning around them, and all there was was this, right here, the two of them, not quite touching but _holy hell_ coming as close as they possibly could...  

It lasted for hours but also seconds, and it was _too damned soon_ when Tony felt the characteristic tingly-pain of oncoming alertness.  

“Oh, damnit, not right now—!  Steve.”  Tony pulled back just far enough that he could see Steve’s whole face.  The cling wrap was foggy, he noticed.  “I’m going to wake up,” he warned.  “I just— I want you to know—”

He touched Steve’s cheek through the cling wrap.  It felt cooler than expected, almost icy, and Tony jerked his hand away in shock; but when he put it back, Steve’s cheek was as warm as his mouth and breath.

Maybe he’d imagined it.

Steve was smiling behind the cling wrap.  “I know,” he promised.  “All _I_ wanna know is, do you have any more of this stuff?”

Tony woke up to the sound of his own laughter echoing through his bedroom.  

There were a lot of times when Tony woke up and his dreams were fuzzy; he would remember one, maybe two images from the night before the rest faded from memory.   _Facts_ were different; if he learned something in the Dreamscape, he generally retained the knowledge, albeit without knowing where it came from (except by process of elimination).  But _memories?_ He had precious few of those stored up.  

Still, the memory of Steve’s mouth on his, of the warmness, of the joy, the intimacy...  This was one memory Tony was going to keep.  It was too bright, too vibrant, to forget.

Tony brushed his fingers over his still-tingling lips and let his head fall back against the pillows.  

When he did eventually go down for breakfast that morning, he instructed Jarvis to make sure there was at least one roll of cling wrap in every single one of the mansion’s rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are life, comments are love!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy and also Priya for beta-ing! Any remaining mistakes are DEFINITELY mine. 
> 
> My headcanon for the vets mentioned in this chapter are that they are Giant Enormous Dorks and all of the animals in this chapter are accordingly named after animals in Nerd Things, except for Afra, who is named after a cat-eyed person in a Nerd Thing, instead. So if you think something sounds familiar, you're right.

 

Tony blinked.

A lot.

“Our second date,” he said slowly, “is... _puppies?”_

Steve was red-cheeked, and Tony was hard-pressed not to find it adorable.  “Well.  There are some cats, too, if you prefer them...”

“Our second date is puppies and kitties,” Tony repeated.  “We could be doing anything in the world, and we’re going to be playing with _puppies and kittens.”_

This was _problematical_ levels of adorable, honestly.  Tony was playing it cool, but he was having a hard time not grinning like a maniac.   _Puppies and kittens._ He hadn’t been allowed to do anything that childish even when he _was_ a child.  He tried to imagine his mother’s reaction if he had brought home a puppy, and utterly failed.

And now he got a chance to do it as an adult.

And it was in the Dreamscape with Steve, so no one would even know.

It was actually a really great idea for a date, he admitted privately.

“Not really,” Steve said, answering his question.  He opened the door with a tiny little shake at the end to make it a question, and Tony nodded an answer and walked through.  “Most of the world isn’t available or isn’t in reach in the Dreamscape.  There are very few businesses that are open; even if, say, a store is unlocked—”  They usually were.  “ — there’s no one there staffing it, most of the time.  So not so many opportunities.  And if we don’t want to steal a car— no, don’t even think about it, we’re not doing that— then we’re pretty much stuck with walking distance.  This place is pretty close to base, it’s open, and it doesn’t lose its charm when the staff aren’t here.”

“Plus, it features puppies.”

Steve paused in leading Tony back through the building.  While the hallway they were in featured several doors, Tony was pretty sure they were heading to the one with the coral-colored, clip-art-adorned sign reading, “ANIMALS AT PLAY INSIDE— USE CAUTION WHEN OPENING!!!”

“I'm getting the impression you aren’t too impressed by that.”

Tony twisted one sneaker-clad toe into the black-and-white tile.  “I didn’t say that.”

Steve gave him a dubious look, and waited.

Tony sighed.  “I was never allowed to have a dog, growing up,” he added, wondering if that would fill in some blanks for Steve.  He shifted the strap of the battery bag; he’d been wearing it over one shoulder, and it was digging in.  “And I wouldn’t feel right getting one now, either.  My life is a little too dangerous; the poor dog wouldn’t be safe.”

Steve nodded, chewing a lip, a speculative expression on his face.  “Well, in that case... Maybe we should enjoy it while we can?”

Silently, Tony gestured for Steve to lead the way.

 

* * *

 

“There was, actually, a couple of other thoughts I had when planning this,” Steve admitted later, as they watched Snuffles (newfie-chow mix) attempt to convince Melissa (calico shorthair) that Tony was a Good Friend whom she should Play With.

“Yeah?”  

Tony tossed Melissa a catnip mouse.

Melissa looked back dubiously, and washed a shoulder.

“Well, for one thing,” said Steve, as Snuffles fetched the mouse, “this animal shelter, it’s run by a pair of really interesting soulmates— in real life, as well as in the ‘Scape.  They’re both vets, they’ve been married for decades...  Or were, anyway; I think I heard that Tom passed away last year...  But because they’re soulmates and have been living here together for so long, these animals...  They’re some of the most _true to life_ animals ever found.  All of their personalities, all of their fur patterns, their quirks— even when one of the real animals got pregnant, the ‘Scape counterpart did, too.”

“Really?”  Tony hadn’t thought much about how animals in the ‘Scape worked; he supposed he’d always assumed that it was something like how the subway in the ‘Scape worked.

(The subway went to all the same stops it did in the real world, and in the same order; however, there was no guarantee how long a person would have to wait in the station until the train showed up, so most people avoided it.  Kevin Pearson, a Dreamscape researcher out at Berkeley, had actually done the research, painstakingly riding every single stop in the BART.  There was even a romantic fairy-tale ending where he met his soulmate during the last ride, and made arrangements to meet up with her in the real world after defending his thesis.)

“I thought, since you like knowing things about how the ‘Scape works, that it might be kind of up your alley.”  Steve looked shyly over at him.  

“It _is_ up my alley,” Tony said.  He smiled at Steve, aware that he was looking dopey, but not quite willing to be upset about it.  “It’s really nice, actually.”

“Well, good.”  Steve smiled at him, shoulders relaxing.  

It was probably best that Steve didn’t realize how charming he looked right at that moment.  

For one thing, almost anybody would be charming when there’s an odd-eyed husky sprawled across two-thirds of their lower body, and Diefenbaker had in fact slumped himself across Steve’s legs almost as soon as the two had taken up seats.  But for another, Steve also had one of the newest dogs in the shelter tucked by his side.  There were two, both young pug mixes, sibling puppies named Ace and Krypto, and Tony was pretty sure the one Steve had was Krypto, because that would mean Ace was the one being cleaned by Afra— older, male, blue, Maine Coon, and outweighing young Ace by a good ten pounds— in the corner.  Steve was holding one hand gently on Krypto’s rump— long fingers barely putting any dimple in the thick, short fur— and the other was stroking him, scratching gently behind the ears, then smoothing down over his scalp, then rubbing under his chin, then over the scalp again, all while Krypto quivered with nerves at the prospect of being _so! close!_ To _new people!!_

Tony watched the sunlight coming in through the high window play in Steve’s hair, and... wished.  Just a little bit.  “What’s the other reason?” he asked, hearing his voice as if from outside himself.

“The other reason?”  Steve sounded dazed, too, almost as if he were feeling the same way Tony was.

“The other thing you were thinking when you picked this place,” Tony reminded him, focusing in with difficulty.

“Oh, that.”  Steve coughed, and actually, to Tony’s delight, blushed.  “Well...  If I can’t touch you...”  Steve picked up Krypto by the scruff of the neck and held him out; Krypto waved his stubby legs in the air and, tentatively, licked Tony’s cheek.  “...I thought I’d find a nice intermediary.”  

Melissa, finally tired of being haughty and standoffish, stepped calmly into Tony’s lap, purring like a chainsaw, and sat, curled up in a perfectly round ball of cat.

 

* * *

 

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“I’m really not,” Tony said happily, leaning on the edge of Miss Winnie’s desk.  She scowled, and poked his elbow with the sharp end of her scissors until he moved it.  “Puppies, I swear to god.  It was really nice, though.”  He frowned a little in puzzlement.  “I mean, if you’d asked me, I would have said immediately that it wasn’t my kind of thing, but...” He watched Miss Winnie as she cocked an eyebrow at him and pulled out a file folder, shuffling papers until they were tidy and she could tuck them inside it.  “...I don’t know.  I guess anything is my kind of thing, as long as Steve’s there.”

“Hmmm.”  Miss Winnie wasn’t looking at him, but he could see her roll her eyes anyway.  

“Oh, god,” he said in playful horror, “I’ve turned into a cheesy romance novel.  Quick, tell me the truth:  am I secretly hiding behind a mask, so I can be sure of coming face-to-face with my soulmate in the appointed place?”  He tossed the back of his hand over his brow.

She raised _both_ eyebrows, this time.   _“The Mask of Zorro?”_ she asked, trying to fit the plot to a movie.

“The latest _Batman_ movie, actually.”

“Ehn, close enough.”  She tucked the folder away in the cabinet, then gave up on being productive and leaned her arms on the counter.  “So what are you doing for your next date?”

“No idea,” Tony said.  “Apparently, you have a list of the possibilities somewhere around here, but I figured it would be cheating to sneak a look.”

She ducked her head conspiratorially.  “I bet you it’s the Zoo,” she said, sounding more confident than she really should have been.

“Uh... Why?”

She shrugged, leaning back again.  “Because he’s already been to the museums.  He’ll take you somewhere new.”

“He hasn’t been to the _Zoo?_ Wait, and how did you know he’s been to the museums?”

“He likes art,” she said mildly.  “And I forgot until last month to put the Zoo on the list.  I suppose he _could_ have gone, somewhere in there...  But I doubt it.  I think you’ve been absorbing a lot of his attention.”  Her tone turned Jarvis-y as she added, “He would have gone to see a lot of these places during your Wild Phase.”

Tony tapped his fingers on the counter, one after another, restlessly.  He thought about what she was saying as he chased a paperclip up and down the counter, then picked the clip up and dropped it in the round, magnetic holder on the counter.  “Got a puzzle for you,” he said, changing the topic.

Miss Winnie gave him a look, but knew better than to try to pursue it and instead leaned forward.  

Tony told her about the battery showing up in the Dreamscape, and how he hadn’t been sure what it signified.  “I can understand it appearing when I first escaped,” he admitted.  “I was confused, disoriented; it had been part of my life for the last few weeks, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I hadn’t quite reconciled to no longer needing it.  But I’d been home for _days_ by the second time it happened.”

He watched as Miss Winnie folded her arms across her chest, thinking, toying with her wedding ring, which spun easily on a finger that was no longer as fleshy as it once had been.  “What do you think it means?” she asked.

Tony grimaced.  “Don’t play shrink, Miss Winnie.  I don’t need that from my friends.”

“Oh, are we friends?”  She raised her eyebrows, but the corners of her mouth tightened as if she were repressing a smile.  “I thought I was just a public employee that the state paid to be available for your questions.”

“Right, I forgot.”  Tony ducked his head.  “My tax dollars at work, right?”

She looked around at her temporarily-clear desk.  “Well, not right this second, anyway.  Seriously, Tony; I’ve known you for years, now.  I know you have a theory.”

“Well, I mean... yeah...”

“So spill.”

Tony sighed.  “I think it has to be part of the ‘Scape, not part of me,” he said, brow and nose both wrinkling at the sharing of a largely-unsupported theory.  “Steve can touch it, for one thing.”

“Still?”

“What?”

“He could touch it when you first got the thing, back when you were dying.  Can he still?  Have you tested it?”

“Oh, that.  Yes, we tested it.  We did...”  Tony snickers as he remembers the look on Steve’s face when they realized that he could spit on the battery, but not on Tony— and also the sourness with which he had refused to _ever do that again._ “We did lots of testing,” he told Winnie now, straight-faced.

She blinked at him above her half-moon glasses.  “Please never tell me what you’re so amused about.  Alright.  What else?”

“With the battery, you mean...?  I’m not sure.  As I said, i think it’s part of the Dreamscape, not part of me _in_ the Dreamscape, but beyond that...”  He spread his hands, fingers flexed.  “It makes no sense.”

Miss Winnie purses her lips and taps a capped pen against the edge of the counter.  “Steve can touch some people,” she said absently.  “He touched Francine.”

“Wasn’t she, well...”

Miss Winnie twitched a shoulder.  “She was dying, yes.  Still a person.  He can touch Snuffles and Afra.”

“You know their _names?_ How many times have you _been_ to that shelter?”

“Often.”  Her eyebrows were up again, as if Tony had disappointed her.  “Michelle is my vet.”

“Okay.”  It took him a second to realize that she had been there in _real life._  “Well, Snuffles and Afra are great animals, but not people, so—”

“You ever have pets, Stark?”

Tony mentally winced and sulked.  “No.”

“They’re people.”

Miss Winnie’s voice did not brook discussion of the matter.

“So we have some exceptions,” Miss Winnie continued.  “Steve’s ability to manipulate reality isn’t a good indicator of whether or not a thing is a Dreamer.”  

Tony hovered his hand flat in the air, then tipped it back and forth.  “Still one of the best we’ve got, even if your examples are valid exceptions.”   _Which I’m not convinced of,_ he mentally added, but it didn’t seem wise to antagonize her.

“I’ll give you another reason not to trust it, too.”  She put the pen down, picked up her travel mug, and set it back down again out of site of the patrons without taking a sip.  “There are things we _know_ are part of the ‘Scape, but Steve can’t manipulate them, either.”

“Forks,” Tony nodded.

“Really?  I was thinking chairs.  Forks, really?”

“Even given the circumstances, it is still moderately hilarious.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”  Miss Winnie picked up the mug again, and again set it down.  “Third argument— and you’re going to love this one.”

Tony grinned back, leaning his elbows on the counter again.  This time, Miss Winnie didn’t stop him.  “Lay it on me.”

“If it’s a part of the Dreamscape, shouldn’t _you_ be able to manipulate it?  You manage so well, with everything else.”

Tony blinked rapidly, shocked.  “No—” he started, but then stopped again.  He thought about all the manipulations he had performed over the years, starting with that first month when he’d made C4 in the kitchen and picked it up the next visit.  “No, that can’t be right.”

But the rocket had worked.  The candy cane had appeared in his pocket.  Hell, the _Iron Man armor_ was in the Dreamscape lab, as golden and red as the one half a block away in the real world.  Tony blinked again, and then shook his head.  “No, none of that works.  All the times I’ve manipulated the Dreamscape, I’ve done so by making it _more_ like reality, not less.”

Miss Winnie sat back and crossed her arms, then leaned forward again and uncrossed them.  “And if you subconsciously believe that’s what you’re doing?”

Tony made a bizarre face.  “I know it’s not, though.  If that were the case, then the fact that I know the battery _isn’t real_ should be enough to dispel it... right?”

Miss Winnie’s face twitched, and she reached out, hauling ineffectively at his left elbow.  “Damn it, Stark!  Will you please move so that you’re blocking my boss’s view of me and I can take a damned drink of tea?!”

Tony laughed, and obligingly stepped to the side.

“Thank you.  Now then, I’m gonna tell you a story.”  She took the aforementioned drink, then swallowed while looking at the ceiling, thinking it over.  One more sip, and the travel mug was hidden again, carefully sealed and tucked out of sight.  “Alright.  Once upon a time, there was a world-famous psychologist.  Brilliant guy.”

“Which one?”

“You’ve never heard of him.”  She ignored whatever bizarre face Tony was making; he didn’t have to see it to feel the muscles and skin stretch.  “And he was working in an asylum, where he met this patient.  Bob.”

“Bob?”

She shrugged.  “Names have been changed.”

“Okay...”

“Now, Bob was in the asylum because he was convinced that he was a grain.”

“Was a _what?”_

“A grain!  Like corn?  Or barley?  Wheat?”

“He was convinced that he was a piece of corn,” Tony repeated slowly, feeling his eyebrows inch their way up.

“For a while.  And then, with therapy, he got better!  Improved.  He knew he wasn’t a piece of grain.”

“Hurray.”

“Hush, you.  And keep an eye out for Derek, he’s had it in for me for the past month, I swear.”  She picked the cup up again and snuck a quick drink.  Tony decided not to tell her he had no idea who Derek was.  “So this guy leaves the psych ward, heads home, starts living his life again...  And then one day, the psychologist—”

“The world-famous one I’ve _never heard of?”_

“That’s the guy— He gets a call.”

“From Bob.”

“From Bob.  And Bob says— He’s in a panic.  ‘Uh, I dunno what to do.’”  Her imitation included a drawn-down mouth, lower-pitched voice, and waving hands, and was actually pretty good.  “‘My neighbor, he just moved in, you’re not gonna believe what this guy’s got.  He’s got _chickens,_ Doc!  My neighbor, he’s freakin’ raisin’ _chickens_ over there!  Uh, I can’t live next to that!   _The chickens will eat me!_ ’”

“That is _amazing._ I’m hiring you to tell this story at my next Board meeting.”

“No, I’m not a comedian.”

“Wait— it’s a _joke?”_

“Yes, of course it’s a joke, you think people actually believe they’re grains of corn?!”

Tony rolled his eyes rather than get back into that.

“So, anyway, this psychologist says, ‘Bob.  Bob, you know now, we went over this, _you know_ that the chickens aren’t going to eat you.’  Bob says, ‘Oh, I know that, do I?’  ‘Yes, you do, because _you know_ that you are not a grain of corn.’”  

She leans in close to deliver the punchline.  “Bob answers him, still worried, ‘Yeah— But do the _chickens_ know that?!’”  She sits back again, sneaking one last drink from the travel mug.  “There’s different levels of knowing things, Tony.  Maybe you psych-know the battery’s not real...  But do you _chicken-_ know it?”

Tony thinks suddenly about his hands, pressed against the hardwood of the library counter.  They hurt, a little bit; an ache running along the backs where they touch his chest...

...as if the chest plate were pressing into them.

 

* * *

 

“Steve, I have a proposal,” Tony said seriously as the next time they met up.  “You don’t have to say yes.”

Steve cocked his head to the side at the way Tony had set the battery duffel on the side-table in the hall.  “You’re not using the backpack today?”

“Part of the proposal.  It goes like this:  Let me plan the third date.”

Steve blinked some more, then asked, amused, “Were the puppies really that bad?”

“The puppies were not bad!  I liked the puppies!  They’re great!  It’s just...  Well, I had an idea, and I was thinking it would be something really nice to do with you...”  Tony rubbed a hand down the back of his neck.  “Like I said, you don’t have to...”

“Well, what were you thinking?  It’s probably nice.”

Tony smiled, relieved.  “Well, I thought we could go see a movie?  There are some good ones coming out, and we could either go out to a theater, or just stay here— I’ve got this projector rigged up, you should see it, it’s great— and either way, we could do popcorn.”

“Hmm...”  Steve studied him, then smiled.  “I do make a mean popcorn.”

 

* * *

 

They ended up watching _The Fellowship of the Ring_ on Tony’s projector, on the theory that the effects would absolutely astonish Steve, and the story itself required no knowledge from the past fifty years for understanding.  “And the next one comes out in just a couple months,” Tony told him, trying in vain to pretend he wasn’t as excited as he actually was.  “So we can actually go watch that one in the theater.”

“Swell,” Steve said, pleased.  “And I suppose it’s a coincidence that your idea of a date leaves us tangled together on a flat surface?”  Tony had gambled and won on a folded-down futon being different enough from a chair that Steve could use it. 

Tony looked down their blanket-wrapped bodied, then back up at Steve, and shrugged.  “Nope,” he admitted.  “Not even a little bit!  This is completely deliberate.”

He fished the tube of cling wrap out from where he’d hidden it under the couch.

 

* * *

 

“No— Stop it, Tony!  I can’t eat popcorn with all of that clear stuff over my face!”

“Really?  We could be making out right now, and you’re worried about the popcorn?”

Steve flushed.  “I— I was trying to pay attention to the movie,” he claimed.  But Tony could see how rapid and shallow his breath was, and how Steve’s muscles tensed beneath the blanket when Tony licked his lips.

He dropped one last kiss on Steve’s cling wrap, and then settled down to watch the movie.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, let’s pause this,” Tony said, shifting a little on the futon so that he could turn his back to the screen.

“Tony, I’m not gonna just make time with you all night—”

“No, it’s not about that, really!  Come on, Steve—”

“Alright!  Alright, just let me—”  Steve shifted himself, too, and then they were pressed together, face to face, breathing each other’s air enough that Tony could feel the warm ghosts on his cheeks and nose.  “What’s going on?”

Tony took a deep breath and let it out again.  “First of all, this movie is five million hours long, we’re not going to finish it in one go.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve said.  And then, in answer to Tony’s raised brows, added, “I read the back of the box.  And also the book.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony agreed.  

And then he stopped, not quite sure how to go on.

The thing was, he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it seemed so important to tell Steve.  Sure, Steve had had some tactical insight the last time Tony had asked him, and it wasn’t exactly unusual to share important information with your soulmate, but...

No, that wasn’t right.

He did know why it was important:  Tony wanted Steve to be _proud_ of him.  

Oh, god, it was so cringeworthy— but he did.  He _so_ did.  And the thing was...  For the first time in his life, Tony thought that maybe— just maybe— he could ask someone to be proud of him, and they _actually would be._ So finally he took a deep breath, and blurted, “I have a team."

“Sorry?”

“A team.”  It was easier the second time, Tony noticed.  So he said it once more:  “A group of people who work with me, and we fight together, the bad things that are happening to this world— the evil, or greedy, or rapacious—

“Like, there was this guy— That’s how we got started— who was trying to take vengeance on his brother, right?  But his brother is a god—”

“A _god?!”_

“Yeah, he— it’s Thor, the Norse god of thunder?”

“That’s _real?”_

“I know— what is my _life,_ right?”  Tony quirked a grin, his breath finally coming easy in his chest again.  “Norse god of thunder, a couple who can shrink and grow at will, me in the Iron Man armor, and a giant green rage monster— pretty cool, right?”  Steve blinked and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Tony waved his hand above them to indicate that he hadn’t really been asking.  “So Thor’s crazy brother was trying to get vengeance on him— not terribly sure for _what,_ but it involved a lot of property damage and blaming Thor, and property damage is usually bad, so...  Anyway, we stopped him.  And then decided to work together again, in the future.  All of us.”  He tucked his head down against Steve’s blanket-covered chest.  “We’re calling ourselves the Avengers— the Wasp named us.”

Steve didn’t say anything for a moment, but Tony could feel his breath stirring his hair.  And then, “The Avengers, huh?”  Steve had such a deep voice for such a skinny guy.  Granted, he was tall, but— “I like it.”

Tony picked his head up, and looked Steve in the face again.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  Steve’s eyes were gentle, but also full of something else.  Something... reminiscing?  Wistful?  Tony wasn’t sure.  “I...”  He struggled with it for a minute— alright, according to Tony’s mental clock, actually about eleven seconds, but that’s a _long time_ when you’re waiting silently for someone to speak— but in the end, whatever he had been going to say, he decided not to.  Instead, with an obvious, abrupt break, he changed the whatever-it-was to, “It’s good to have a team, Tony.”  

Which was true, and he obviously meant that he was glad Tony had a team.  Possibly that he was glad Tony had someone to watch his back?  

Damn it, what was Tony missing here?

And then Steve jerked his head to the side in a dismissive gesture, and his arms tightened around Tony like steel bars.  His hand spread flat across Tony’s back, pressing him even closer, and Tony lost his train of thought in the warmth and pressure and comfort of being held close by Steve.

 

* * *

 

They didn’t make it all the way through _Fellowship;_ as predicted, Tony woke not long after that conversation, the movie still paused in Rivendell.  And it was a while before Tony found himself on the futon with Steve again, too:  there was a lot to do, between his company, the Melter, and the Avengers.  

“So now we’ve out looking for him,” Tony said when they were finally back on the couch again, describing how they had had to go looking for the Hulk.  “I’m actually sleeping in the armor right now, on a submarine, if you can believe it.”

“Of you?” Steve teased.  “I’m pretty sure I could believe anything.”  

But his hand ran down Tony’s back again, and Tony wriggled in closer to the warm, precious form of his soulmate.

 

* * *

 

“Ugh, I can’t believe they just _leave_ it there,” Tony complained when the movie ended.  

“I thought you’d seen this before...?”  

“Yes, and _every time_ I’m ticked off about how it ends!  Why can’t it be December, already?  I want the next one out!”

“Having read the book for the next one, I’m pretty sure you won’t like how that one ends, either.”  Steve paused in teasing Tony to give a huge, convulsive shudder.  “Is it cold in here?”

Tony blinked, startled.  “No,” he said.  “I’m actually quite comfortably warm.”  

“Really?!  I’m freezing!”

Tony bit his lip, hesitating, his eyes half-closing as he thought about it.  

For maybe half a second.  

And then acted.

“You know...  We _did_ just finish our third date,” he pointed out.  Steve’s head turned sharply as he stared with an unmistakable hunger in his eyes.  Tony licked his lips.  “Want me to warm you up?”

It was an absolutely terrible line.

And it worked like a charm.

Tony reached under the futon for the cling wrap, tearing off a generous sheet that wound up flapping around and sticking to itself, making Steve laugh even as he shivered.  Tony got it squared away, though, covering Steve’s face, neck, and upper shoulders.  

“Tony!”  Steve pulled at the wrap, tangling it against itself.  “You can’t cover my _nose,_ I need to _breathe!”_

“Sorry!  I was in a hurry.  Sorry!”  Tony took the clear plastic out of Steve’s hands, trying to unstick it from itself again before giving up and using it to pull one of Steve’s suspenders down, instead.

Steve’s breath caught.

_“Tony.”_

Tony bit his lip, not looking away from Steve’s eyes, and pulled the suspender all the way off.  He used it on the other suspender, too, and then cautiously pulled the blanket down a bit to work at Steve’s shirt buttons, only for Steve to push him away.  “No, go on— grab another piece of plastic, I’ll get the shirt,” Steve ordered breathlessly, and Tony nodded fast, complying.

He moved more carefully, this time, wrapping the sheet of cling wrap carefully so that it tucked around both of Steve’s ears, as well, before dipping down to pass, unobstructive, under his nose, and with plenty of slack in and around the mouth to allow movement.  

Their relative positions forced Steve to keep most of his weight on his shoulders, pinning his shirt in place, but Tony didn’t think that was why Steve’s  movements were slowing as he went to pull the shirt off his shoulders.  Instead, his hesitation seemed to be due to his own self-consciousness, which was frankly criminal as far as Tony was concerned.  “Is this...” Steve started, then broke off and waved a hand at his admittedly slight frame.  “Are you— I know what I look like...  Is it... okay?”  

“Depends; do you look like my soulmate?” Tony asked fiercely.  “Because that’s what _I’m_ here for.”

He passed another sheet of cling wrap over Steve so that it covered his shoulders and upper chest and snorted, trying to keep his voice gentle even though he kind of secretly wanted to repulsor everyone who had ever made Steve doubt himself, right in their stupid  _faces._   “I _know_ you, Steve.  I know how loyal you are, how clever, how honest— look.  You’re looking at the wrong thing, here.  You’re not all muscle-bound, fine, we both know it; but why the hell should I care about that?  You’re beautiful, and you’re exactly what I want.”  He remembered the early days of agonized pining, and added, “Hell, you always have been.”  

He leaned in to press a careful, close-mouthed kiss to the corner of Steve’s lips, which were trembling slightly.  Probably not from the cold, Tony thought, watching the emotion swim in Steve’s eyes.  Steve was an old-fashioned guy; he almost never spoke of his feelings unless Tony pressed him, he didn’t show things readily.  He had been green with jealousy even as he pushed Tony away, and Tony had never even known until a couple months ago— and then, only because Steve _told_ him!  So if Tony could see the impact of his words on Steve, it meant they were packing a hell of a punch.  He kissed the other side of Steve’s mouth, then gave him a deeper, open-mouthed kiss in the center.  “I am exactly where I’ve been aching to be,” he whispered hoarsely.  

Steve made a bitten-off noise and ducked his head away, rucking the cling wrap somewhat.  

Tony pulled the blanket back up so that he could rest his weight on his elbows and press his body— _all_ of his body— further into Steve.  There was something that was just so _satisfying,_ something about the way it felt to have a body pressed under him, something about that body being _Steve’s,_ that was constantly blowing Tony’s mind.  It wasn’t just that they were finally doing this, that they were finally _together_ in a way Tony had been silently wishing for for most of a decade; it was something more, something like the feeling of _rightness_ that came when you get your spine cracked.  

He felt the grin start at his eyes, crinkling up in satisfaction at that warm, solid feeling; it spread across his face and into his shoulders, and he found himself smiling dopily down at Steve and rubbing up against him like a teenager in an abandoned parking lot first discovering the joys of third base.   He snorted, waggling his eyebrows.

“Hi, there,” he said, pitching his voice low and mischievous.   

Steve laughed at the ridiculousness, his answering smile like a sunbeam.  “Hi, back,” he said, shifting an inch to the right so that Tony’s legs fell around his, one in between and one on the outside.  It pressed them together in a new and _highly wonderful_ way, and Tony sucked in a shocked, delighted breath before adjusting, raising his body onto hands and knees for mobility— and also for, uh, _room to grow,_ as it were.  He felt an absurd, not-quite-explicable sense of daring, of adventure, like he was some new-age Quartermaine about to set foot on a beach never seen human eyes before as he lowered his mouth to Steve’s.

It was a slow slide into the inevitable, after that, like the top of the first big hill on a roller coaster, sharing mouths and hands and grinding through the blanket against each other, until their gasps came in unison and the tension was almost too much to bear.  Tony’s skin felt like it was prickling all over, like the wave of goosebumps in an electrically charged room, or like he was being shot with hundreds of tiny grains of sand.  Steve’s hands, wrapped in blankets, rubbed across his shoulders; Tony responded by brushing his fingertips in fascination around Steve’s ears, which made him squirm and gasp deliciously.  They kissed, and kissed, and kissed, deep and hard, soft and lush, giving each other little nips and swallowing each other’s smiles, but always, always, moving against each other; small movements, instinctive movements, but old ones, the sort of movements soulmates had been sharing for millennia.  

It lasted an eternity, and it was still over too soon, Steve crying out first and throwing his head back, Tony biting a hickey into his neck as he bucked against him and followed, collapsing afterwards in a sweaty, sticky, but very self-satisfied mess.  They stilled, panting, Tony’s head pressed to Steve’s shoulder, resting against the cling-wrap barrier between them.  

Neither one of them had even taken off their pants.

“Wow,” said Steve after a couple minutes, sounding dazed.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed fervently.  

_“Wow.”_

_“Yeah.”_ And then, before they could get stuck in the pattern they were establishing, “Here, scoot over— no, the other way—”  Tony slid around until he was on the outside of the futon, allowing slack in the line to the battery, and Steve was pressed against the inside, where it was folded up into a couch.

Truth be told, Tony mostly just liked the idea of pressing Steve up against something.

“We’re doing that again, right?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Steve agreed.  He shivered all over and hunched down under the blanket.  “Um.  Soon, I hope?”

“Yeah,” Tony breathed, relieved.  “God, very soon.  He— heck, give me five minutes.”

Steve laughed, and then shivered again.  Tony frowned.  “Are you cold, still?”

“A bit, yeah.  It went away when we were...”

“Exertion,” Tony nodded, “Exothermic.  Here, there might be another blanket—”  But the one that was usually down here was already wrapped around them.  “No, I’ll have to go get the Cap-ghan from upstairs.  Stay here?”

“Sure,” Steve agreed.  He smiled slyly up at Tony.  “Think it’ll take you five minutes....?”

Tony laughed, and then smirked.  “Maybe less,” he answered, but they both knew which process he was referring to.   _(Not_ getting the Cap-ghan.)  Steve huddled down into the blanket he already had, watching Tony’s back as he made his way up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

As a matter of fact, it only took Tony two and a half minutes to get the Cap-ghan from the closet and return downstairs, but it didn’t matter:  by the time he returned, Steve was already gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S OKAY HE'S OKAY HE JUST WOKE UP IT'S FINE
> 
> I'll write the next chapter faster if you leave a comment, though. ^_^


	11. Chapter 11

Where the hell could he have gone?  

Tony paced into the room.  “Steve?”

Maybe the bathroom?  But most people never needed to use the restroom in their dreams, which was good, because it was the sort of thing that tended to have messy and unfortunate side effects in the real world when it did happen.

_ And anyway, ghosts don’t shit! _

A small curl of panic started to rise in Tony’s chest, and he ruthlessly suppressed it.  There was almost nothing that could happen to you in the Dreamscape that would actually physically hurt you, he remembered; the worst that could happen is you would just wake up.

_ But Steve can’t wake up... _

The panic squeezed tighter.  

No signs of a struggle; no note; Steve’s jacket, which had been tossed over the back of the futon not long after they’d pressed play, was still there...  

Abruptly, Tony remembered how he used to use sex to avoid the Dreamscape.  “No  _ way,”  _ he moaned, running a hand through his hair.  “Okay okay okay, it’s okay.”

If sex put you mentally in a place where you couldn’t sustain a ‘Scape, and Tony had just had sex with Steve  _ in  _ the ‘Scape, and Steve didn’t  _ have  _ a body  _ outside  _ the ‘Scape...  “It’s okay, it’s okay; it’ll be okay.  He’ll be back, just... as soon as a bit of time has passed.”

But the worry didn’t fade, and Tony’s heart sped and sped, until it was beating so hard he woke himself up.  

 

* * *

 

“FUCK!”

It came out of the speakers in a crackle of overloaded static, and Tony took a moment to be glad he was tucked away into one of the bunks near the rear of the sub.

As long as he was awake, he reasoned, he might as well check how the search was going— Hulk had to be out there, somewhere, after all.  He wandered forward and found Thor asleep in a spare chair in the control room.  Wasp was standing next to Giant Man, their heads bent towards each other; Giant Man’s hands were on the controls, Tony noticed, but his whole body was turned away from them, and he wasn’t looking at the display at all.  Which was fine, because they’d have plenty of warning if they  _ did  _ happen upon any sign of Hulk, and anyway, there probably wasn’t anything on them— 

He glanced at the display, and then started forward, mentally cursing.  Of  _ course  _ something would pop up right when they least expected it!

“Hey, guys, I hate to interrupt...  But what  _ is  _ that?”

“What?”  Giant Man’s head snapped around.  “Oh, damn!  Hang on...”  Giant Man dialled up the info display, and they leaned in.  Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Wasp surreptitiously kick Thor awake.  “It looks like... a man?”

“Surely he cannot survive submersion,” Thor objected.

“Damn, you’re right!”  Giant Man moved quickly, after that, popping the hatch and swinging out towards the unconscious form in the waves— luckily, they’d already been on the surface when they detected the figure.  

Soon enough, Giant Man had the... whoever it was... inside the sub again, and was taking long strides towards the infirmary, Wasp sitting on his shoulder and studying the dripping person.  Just as Giant Man passed the doorway of the infirmary, moving to set his charge on the table and pulling out the extension to support his legs, Wasp slipped off of his shoulder and flew back towards Tony and Thor.  

“Did you see?” she asked, her voice alight with excitement.  “Did you  _ see  _ what he was  _ wearing?” _

“I think that’s more your lookout than mine, Wasp,” Tony quipped, and then winced as Jan gave him a very sharp look.  

She shook her head, dismissing it.  “You don’t understand,” she said.  “I think that might be Captain America!”

 

* * *

 

The first bizarre thing that happened was that Steve woke up.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right; the  _ first  _ bizarre thing that happened was the fact that Steve had a Dreamscape  _ at all,  _ when it came right down to it.  But after— well, the— with Tony— after  _ that,  _ the first bizarre thing was that he woke up.  

And woke up  _ freezing!  _  His uniform— still in place, all of it, right down to the cowl— was soaking wet.  

He bit back the questions that he instinctively wanted to shout, and instead, studied his surroundings, marking the corners of the room, the equipment, the exits, the other people in there with him; the room was small, metal-walled, and seemed vaguely hospital-like, although it carried an awful lot of equipment that had never been in any hospital Steve had ever seen.  

The people in the room with him were even stranger, or at least that was what he thought at first:  a man with some kind of medieval armor, a man in a red suit, a woman in a— wow, that sure was a  _ skin tight  _ sort of outfit— and some kind of robot—

Wait...   _ No! _

Not a robot; Steve felt his eyes grow wide as he realized that he had  _ seen that armor before.   _

_ Oh my God,  _ he thought, panic making his heart kick up into high gear.   _ Oh my  _ God,  _ this is real!  That’s Tony!   _

For one glorious moment, it was perfect:  all he knew was that he and his soulmate were  _ in the same room,  _ they were  _ about to meet—   _ He was flying, he was weightless, he was falling, it was amazing, it was the best thing that had ever happened to him— 

— and then it all came crashing down.

_ I can’t tell him who I am,  _ he realized, feeling as cold as if someone had splashed him with a fresh bucket of ice water.  He cut his gaze away from the (shining, beautiful,  _ heartstopping) _ armor.   _ It’s classified;  _ I’m  _ classified.  I’ve always  _ been  _ classified.  It’d be treason.  _

Oh, God, no.

_ I have lie to him.  In person.   _

This was _ awful. _

Steve looked away from the assembled... team, he guessed they were... cutting his eyes to the ground.  His mouth worked, silently, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually say anything, especially since he had no idea what he could possibly tell them without giving anything top secret away.

“Hey, there.”  Tony's voice came distorted out of the suit, and Steve jumped; he hadn't expect that.  “No no no, it's okay!  Do you know where you are?”

“How— How would I know that?” he asked, eyes wide with alarm.  

Oh god, had Tony put it together already?

What if he  _ recognized  _ Steve?  Most people who had a ‘Scape, they couldn't remember any details— Steve had always been pretty unusual, in that regard, even before the Serum — but what if Tony made the connection, anyway?

Tony tilted the armor’s head to the side.  “Good point,” he said.  Even through the vocal distortion, Steve could hear the smile, and his panic subsided slightly.  “Okay.  You're on a submarine in the North Atlantic.  Uh...  There's really no good way to put this...”

“Are you really who it looks like you are?” interrupted the largest of them, the man in red.

This, at least, Steve was at liberty to say.  “I’m Captain America,” he answered cautiously, “And the last thing I remember, I was on a mission...  A top secret one, which, I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to tell you about.”  

Best to just say it boldly, even if it made his lips hurt to shut out his soulmate like that... 

Tony seemed to understand, though.  “That’s fine,” he jumped in, the speakers on his suit crackling.  “May I see your shield, please?”

The dame passed it over to him from just below Steve’s line of sight, her eyebrows raised and pert mouth pursed.  Steve only gave her a glance, though, before his eyes were drawn, inexorably, back to Tony.  

A few experimental taps and tosses, and Tony, at least, seemed completely convinced.  “There are a lot of things about Captain America that could be faked,” he told the rest of his team.  “But not this.  This is the real shield.  There’s a unique alloy composed of vibranium and steel, it has an interesting— never mind.”  The disconcertingly blank faceplate turned towards Steve.  “You must be the real deal, too.  Oh, god, this is amazing!  But I bet you’re confused as all— uh— I mean, confused as all get out.”

Steve opened his mouth, and what fell out was, “What  _ is  _ this?!”

He winced. 

It was not the most polite he’d ever been.

But, “We’re the Avengers,” the lady beamed, apparently not minding the rudeness at all.  “I’m the Wasp, this is Giant Man, Thor, and Iron Man.”

It only got more complicated from there.

 

* * *

 

“But surely,” protested Thor, “There must be some accounting you might share of yourself!”

“Not his fault,” Iron Man said, and even with the vocal distortion, his voice was sympathetic.  “The guy’s situation is classified, that’s the end of the story.”

“Except it so obviously  _ isn’t  _ the end of the story,” Wasp pointed out.  Her eyes were alight with curiosity, and Steve noted with some alarm that she was eyeing him like a particularly juicy hunk of beef.  “How on Earth did you end up  _ here?” _

“How should  _ I  _ know?  I was—”  He couldn’t say  _ asleep, _ he couldn’t say  _ dead...  _  “— unconscious.  Maybe I’ve been in a state of suspended animation, or preserved like Buck Rogers, or something.”  He swallowed, and added, honestly, “I can tell you this:  I remember hitting the water, and I remember that at that time, I wasn’t expecting to wake up.” 

He had thought he was dead.

He had thought Bucky was dead.

Apparently, he’d only been right about one, and for a moment, it felt like the wrong one.

Giant Man sighed.  “I move to table this until we’re all back on solid ground and significantly better rested.”

“Agreed.”  Thor plopped himself down into a handy chair, apparently intending to go back to sleep right there.

“Get some rest, Captain,” Iron Man—  _ Tony—  _ advised, as they sped in the submarine back towards the East Coast.  “We’ll be back in New York before you know it.  Mr. Stark— my boss; I’m technically his bodyguard—”  And that was such a whopper that Steve went momentarily breathless, although Tony had told him already in the Dreamscape that that was the story he had put about.  “ — He’ll have the connections to set you up with a new identity, get you some modern clothing, start integrating you into society again.”

Steve hesitated, a thousand words he wanted to say on the tip of his tongue. 

“What is it?” asked Tony, voice breaking over the digitizer.  “Do I have something on my faceplate?  You’re staring.”

Steve felt his pulse speed again, the panic picking back up as he wondered what excuse he could give.  Of course he was staring; it felt almost impossible to look away from Tony, Tony who was his beautiful, brilliant soulmate, and who was only three feet away and didn’t even know it.

“You’re staring, too, Shellhead,” pointed out Giant Man.

“Yeah, but I’ve got a reason,” Tony shot back.  “I mean, come on:  He’s  _ Captain America!” _  Steve remembered abruptly that, even not knowing who he was, Tony had always been a Cap fan, and a mortified flush started rising up his neck.  Tony definitely noticed, too; he tilted his head to the side and asked, “Captain?”

Oh, god.  Steve was never going to have a chance to  _ fix this  _ if he didn’t do everything he could to tell the truth.

“I need to debrief,” he blurted.  “The army, the Pentagon— someone out there has to be able to take my report, right?  And maybe declassify me?”

“In theory,” Tony shrugged.  

Steve stared into his eyes.  He could see them through the mask, just a hint of blue, and Steve could tell that Tony was already thinking of a hundred different things at once.

“I want my name back,” Steve said plaintively.  “Can’t you— your boss,” he corrected himself, “who's going to integrate me, you said.  Can he possibly move quickly?”

The other Avengers, the Wasp, Giant Man, and Thor, all turned to look at Iron Man expectantly.

“Sure,” he capitulated.  “Are you kidding?  I promise you, Cap, he'll be just as stoked to help you out as I am."  Steve almost laughed, a fit of hysteria putting a brittle edge on his smile, but with the cowl, Tony must not be able to see it.  " Giant Man, take us up," Tony said.  "I’ll fly back tonight, it’s a lot faster.  And then change course,” he added over his shoulder, already heading out into the hallway, his metallic steps ringing in time with Steve’s poor, pounding heart.  “Your new destination will be Washington, D.C.”

 

* * *

 

Tony, Steve discovered, did not mess around.  By the time they had arrived in D.C., a uniformed chauffeur was waiting with a long car whose darkened windows prevented anyone from seeing inside.  They were escorted, Wasp and Giant Man— both now a normal size— Thor, and Steve, in a motorcade, with another black-windowed car on ahead of and behind them.  Steve had been to Washington before, but it was a little different in the new millennium, and it took him a moment to realize what their destination actually  _ was.   _ When he did, he gasped.  

“Captain?”  Thor looked up at him, having heard the noise.  “Is all well?”

“I...  Yes,” Steve fumbled.  “I just— gosh, that ‘Mr. Stark’ fellow must have really pulled out all the stops!”

Wasp and Giant Man were listening, too, now.  “I would think so,” Wasp said plainly.  “I mean, you’re  _ Captain America!   _ You’re a national hero; of course we’re all going to do everything possible to help you fit in!”

“Oh— well, thank you, but— I just...”  Steve paused, feeling flustered, and the blew out a harsh breath and gathered his wits.  His hair, under the cowl, felt sticky, and he made an abortive move with his hand as if he could run it through it.  “I don’t even know who the president  _ is,  _ now,” he said plaintively, and Wasp blinked as they pulled up smartly in front of the White House.

 

* * *

 

The Avengers were invited inside with him, and dogged his steps as he was led into a poshly-appointed receiving room, one containing an array of snacks—  _ Thoughtful,  _ Steve decided— the President, a small knot of secret service agents, another knot of aides, and one shockingly familiar face:   _ Nick Fury,  _ of all people, was standing at the President’s side as Steve and the others were led in, and he studied Steve’s face as Steve recognized him— shock, most likely, being the dominating expression, although Steve was also genuinely glad to see him again— and also— probably even more tellingly— as Steve completely failed to recognize the President of the United States of America for who he was, at least until Giant Man elbowed him in the side and mouthed, “That’s the President!”

Belatedly, Steve saluted.

Nick Fury snorted softly, reaching out to take one of the dinky plastic cups of what looked like punch, and said, “Good to have you back, Captain.”  To the President, he added, “That’s him,” before turning his back on all of them and leaving the room.

They were, actually, given a small reception, with the President expressing his gratitude to the Avengers for their hard work in recovering the national icon, Captain America— a speech that was extremely disconcerting from the national icon’s point of view— and someone took a photo; in short order, however, the Avengers were led out, along with about half the aides, and the President himself proceeded to debrief Steve.  

It was the least rigorous debriefing of Steve’s life, which he supposed made sense; the war had been over for decades, after all.  Still, it grated, and left him feeling nostalgic and homesick for a place he could never, actually, return to.

When it was done, the President sat back— they were sitting in facing armchairs at this point; it was disconcertingly informal— and plopped his elbows on the sides of the chair.  His eyes crinkled, and his mouth twitched, and, even though Steve  _ knew  _ it was a foolish thing to do in the presence of someone who could destroy any chance he had of freedom, he found himself relaxing.  

“Well, son, what d’you wanna do?”

Steve blinked— he was pretty sure he’d been born early enough to be the man’s  _ grandfather, _ for one thing— and swallowed.  “Sir,” he began slowly, respectfully— 

“Nuh-uh, none of that, now; just spit it out.”

So he did.  “Liberty, sir.  The right to determine for myself the appropriate use of my talents.”

“As Captain America?”  

How had this man been electable with a voice that nasal?  But maybe that was just his New York prejudice against a Texan accent...

“Yes, sir.”  He hesitated, but added honestly, “And also as myself.”

“You wanna tell people who you are.”  

“Yes, sir.”  The President’s face was compassionate, and his eyes looked kind, and Steve thought perhaps he might be swayed by the truth...  “I have a Dreamscape, sir.  I...  I hadn’t met my soulmate, yet, when I—”  He deliberately looked away from the other man’s eyes.  “I would like to be able to  _ explain—” _

“Sure.”

Steve’s head jerked up.  

“Hell, you’re Captain America!  If I can’t trust your judgement, we must be in a pack of trouble!”

He almost couldn’t believe his ears.  “When you say, ‘sure’, sir, do you mean... do you mean  _ all  _ of it?”

“Course!  I can’t keep you in the army because of service restrictions, so liberty’d be best, anyway!  Don’t talk about Project: Rebirth.  Other than that, use your discretion.”

It seemed like too much, too quickly, to be that easy, an almost childlike simplicity putting Steve’s back up...  He stared, and then realized what was going on.  “Fury briefed you.”

“Hell, yeah, Fury briefed me!  You think my current advisors know jack about top-secret projects from sixty years ago?  Nuh-uh.  So what you want is also what I want, and we’re done here.”

And with that, the president reached out as if to shake his hand.

It just seemed way, way too easy.

But on the other hand...

“Thank you, sir,” Steve said, and took the hand, feeling dazed.

The president’s grip tightened sharply on him.  “There’s just one more thing,” he said, and really, the downside of those compassionate-looking wrinkles was that they made the man’s eyes look awfully beady...

 

* * *

 

“So then what happened?”  Wasp asked, crossing her shapely legs and leaning back against the side of the limo.  She and Giant Man were riding with Steve, Thor having volunteered to return the submarine to New York; the rest of them were in a car, heading north.  

Steve shook his head, still confused by the almost childish affect of the current ruler of a world superpower.  

“He...  He asked me to sign an action figure.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES!
> 
> First things first: YOU ALL ARE FUCKING AMAZING! Holy shit, I DID NOT anticipate the level of response I got to the last chapter! I quite literally almost cried. I bragged to my mom about you guys, seriously, I was completely blown away. And *too goddamn right*, I finished this chapter as quickly as I could because of it! Wow! With responses like that, I REALLY didn't want to let you all down! You're so amazing!!!
> 
> That being said, the next chapter is mostly porn, so it may take me a couple of weeks to write it. I will put in as much time on it as I can, though, I promise! It's also the last chapter, unless I think of something to include as an epilogue. 
> 
> There are a couple of aspects to interactions with the Dreamscape in this chapter that I hope were clear; I tried really hard to make them that way, but I'm not at all sure I succeeded. For one thing, Steve has always remembered his dreams with relative clarity, Tony has always remembered them pretty fuzzily. That's not due to anything like eidetic memory or the Serum or anything like that, it's just a "different strokes for different folks" thing that I tried to lay the groundwork for waaaay back in the early chapters when Tony couldn't remember Steve's last name at first (he eventually learned it, by the way.) One of the things that drives me crazy is when the rules of an AU apply to absolutely everyone in the same way; after all, we all have different hair colors, and except for Hulk, that's not related to superpowers, either! :) 
> 
> The other thing, which is a totally arbitrary thing but I've laid the groundwork for this one, too, in a lot of the romance books and plots Tony mentions: the place where your 'Scape is, is the place where you first come *face to face* with your soulmate. As in, no masks. As in, not on a frigging submarine in the middle of the Atlantic. No, this rule has nothing to do with convenient plot contrivance, why do you ask? ;) 
> 
> Please feel free to ask me if you have questions about how all this works! I'm still catching up on last chapters responses (AGAIN: HOLY SMOKES Y'ALL!!!!!), but I will answer eventually, and I love talking about it!
> 
> And lastly: THANK YOU!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is one point in this chapter that I specifically wrote hoping for someone to art it. Because I love contest stuff like this-- if you guess it, I will write you a snippet (200 words). If you illustrate it, I will-- well, honestly, probably want to offer you my firstborn, but since that seems unlikely to happen at this point, I'll settle for writing you a 1k ficlet. ^_^

Steve found himself napping in the car on the way up to New York.  Not enough to dream— and certainly not enough for the Dreamscape— but enough that, by the time they turned up 5th, he was starting to feel somewhat less buffeted by the events of the last twenty-four hours.  

Not enough that he was ready for Iron Man to touch down outside their limo at a stoplight twenty blocks south of the mansion, though.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, but Iron Man’s mask wasn’t giving anything away.  

“I need to borrow Giant Man and the Wasp,” he said, metallic voice buzzing with caution.  “Just for a few minutes.  There’s a statue that needs their attention.”

Steve nodded, and reached for his shield.

“I can—”

“Happy will finish taking you home,” Tony interrupted him.  “And Jarvis, the butler, will show you to a room.  You can trust them implicitly.”

Like he was going to let Tony go off and fight alone.  “I’m more than happy to—”

But Iron Man was shaking his head.  “That’d be a poor welcome, asking you to take care of our Avengers business.  And besides, you must be exhausted.” 

“A bit tired, but I think I’ve slept long enough!”

Wasp put a hand on his arm, gently, but still enough to give him pause.  “I’d be happy to have your help in the future,” she said, her voice warm, “But maybe we should train together, first?”

Before he could stop them, Giant Man and Wasp slipped out of the limo and shut Steve inside.  The stoplight changed to green, and the improbably-named Happy pulled the limo away.  

Steve, stunned, subsided into his seat.  Sure, he could have jumped from the car— not like he hadn’t done it before, in vehicles moving a lot faster than this— but he was too hurt by the rejection to have much heart for it.  He had a feeling that, while their concerns were legitimate, the more potent, underlying problem was that they just didn’t trust him yet.  

_ And why should they?  _ he reminded himself.  They’d only just met, after all.

But Tony was his soulmate, and it hurt.

 

* * *

 

Mr. Jarvis— whom Steve had, of course, heard about from Tony in the Dreamscape— did indeed show him to a room— specifically, the one right across from Tony’s.  Steve wondered about that, a little; it was right at the head of the stairs, and so would seem to indicate some sort of favor bestowed on him, but if that was the case, why wasn’t one of the Avengers already using the room?  Surely Thor, a literal god, would be the appropriate person to house there?  Steve would have expected to be further down the hall.

“There are a number of garments in a size appropriate to the last measurements Mr. Stark was able to discover,” Mr. Jarvis told him.  “I have taken the liberty of hanging them in the closet here, although you are, of course, more than welcome to request any other clothes you might need.  Indeed, any sundries whatsoever, from toiletries to exercise equipment and more, we would be happy to provide— please do but say the word.  

“Secret identities are respected here in the mansion, and at no point are you required to run about without your uniform; however, as I believe you have only the one at this time, I suggest that you deposit it outside the door and retire for the evening.  You’ll have a change of uniform before you wake up tomorrow, I’m sure; Mr. Stark had mentioned synthesizing you new uniforms from old measurements, and may even have begun the process, but he is out on business for now and will not be back until later this evening.”

“Right,” Steve agreed, trying not to be too sarcastic about it.  Mr. Jarvis may have raised an eyebrow in response, or he may not; it was difficult to tell.

Steve was still feeling the sting of the fact that “Mr. Stark” was most definitely not out on business.

Still...  He sighed.  “What time is it?” he wondered aloud.  It seemed to have been early afternoon when they met with the President; surely it was past dinner, now?  

“Nearly eight o’clock, sir.”

There were a lot of things Steve wanted to do, but he thought it would be awful to be gone when the Avengers came back.  “Any idea what T— What  _ Iron Man  _ is investigating with the Avengers?”

Mr. Jarvis shook his head.  “I’m afraid that’s none of my business, sir.”  

“And if I were to wait up until the others all got in...?”

“You are more than welcome to do so, sir.  If you would like, I would be happy to provide a face-obscuring—”

“Not necessary,” Steve said.  “I’ll just shower and change into something... normal...”  He glanced at the closet dubiously, suddenly realizing that “normal” here would most certainly not be what he was used to.

Mr. Jarvis suppressed a smile.  “Would you like me to lay something out for you, Captain?”

He heaved a relieved sigh.  “That’d be  _ great!   _ Thanks, Mr. Jarvis.  And... is there anything to eat?”

Mr. Jarvis beamed at him, and promised him he would make him a snack, then selected an outfit— he was even thoughtful enough to lay out some jockey shorts, although those hadn’t changed that much— and disappeared downstairs.  

Steve took a second shower— he’d had a brief one on the ship— this time luxuriating in the soaps and soft clothes made available to him.  The towels, in particular, seemed sinfully luxurious.  (He couldn’t say much for the shaving set, though.)  He dressed quickly in the clothes Mr. Jarvis had provided, and found them simple; professional-seeming, especially compared to the things Steve had seen in the Dreamscape.   He slipped on the shoes indicated— not boots, as expected, but rather a set of penny-loafers; he supposed they were more casual inside the house— and opened his door, only to come nose to nose with Mr. Jarvis holding a tray.

Mr. Jarvis recovered first.  “Dinner, Captain?”  He lifted the tray suggestively, a kind sort of amusement at their situation tugging his mouth.

“Thanks, Mr. Jarvis,” Steve smiled back.  “Do you mind if I come downstairs to eat it, though?  I was hoping to talk to the Avengers when they get in.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Mr. Jarvis said, then seemed to catch himself.  “If I may, there’s a very comfortable library adjacent to the dining room in which you are welcome to wait.”

Steve would rather have waited wherever Mr. Jarvis was going; he was just about done with being alone.  He couldn’t really justify imposing, though.  “Thank you,” he said once again, and Mr. Jarvis nodded and started carrying the tray back downstairs.

 

* * *

 

The library probably wasn’t really cold.  It was most likely a mental trick, an expectation on Steve’s part that he  _ would  _ be cold.  Or just that he was used to always being covered in blankets while there; the ‘Scape wasn’t cold, but of course they habitually wrapped up because how else could they touch each other?

And now that Steve was here, he would be able to touch to his heart’s content, hair, skin, Tony’s long-fingered, terrifyingly deft hands, able to feel the softness and warmth of his mouth without the cling wrap in the way...  

Steve shivered.  

Tony was here; he was  _ here!   _ He was  _ so close!   _ All Steve had to do was wait until he came back— or go find him, he supposed, but that would involve figuring out where Iron man was and then persuading someone to take him there— not to mention that Tony and the other Avengers had made it unambiguously clear that they thought Steve should sit this one out.  (Also, Steve was pretty sure his uniform was in the middle of being scrubbed right now, and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to fighting evil in penny loafers.)

But as soon as Tony came back...

Somehow, in Steve’s mind, they skipped the awkward parts.  Somehow, they were done talking to the team, and instead were back here, back in Tony’s room, stepping closer to the bed...  Tony leaned in, closer to Steve, his hands warm and hovering over Steve’s skinny shoulders— no, Steve was big again now— over Steve’s— huh.  Okay,  _ one  _ hand was over Steve’s shoulder, the other was pulling him in at the waist, Tony’s mouth— his whole face, technically— tilting to the side, edging closer....

In the library, Steve brushed his thumb over his own lower lip, and shivered.

He really was cold, he decided, and went upstairs to fetch a blanket.

 

* * *

 

“I got the call around noon, but didn’t deal with it until this evening—  I was busy coping with the whole ‘Captain America is alive’ situation,” Tony found himself explaining to the other Avengers as they stared at the statue.  It was incredibly life-like, down to the last little detail.  Well, it turned out there was a good reason for that.  “Security footage indicates that it was a man posing as a photographer; he snuck into the crowd, weapon disguised as a camera, and opened fire while pretending to take a picture.  The action was lost in the confusion, and there’s no trace of him anywhere.   I forwarded his description to the cops, just in case.”

“Well, I’m stumped,” Giant Man admitted.  “What the heck can cause this?  I don’t suppose he abandoned the weapon so we can reverse-engineer it?”

“No such luck,” Iron Man agreed.  

“And it just turned him into a statue?”

“That’s what all the footage, eyewitness accounts, and evidence say.”  Tony rolled his eyes, safely behind the faceplate, both because they were retreading ground that they had definitely already covered, and also because  _ what was his life? _

“Huh.”

Jan— Wasp— tilted her head to the side.  “Have you tried canvassing the neighborhood, see if anyone knows where he might be?  I doubt our mystery attacker-slash-photographer just vanished into mid-air.”

“Not yet,” Tony admitted.  “I was sort of waiting for more manpower to do that.”  He grinned at her, even though she couldn’t see it, but she must have known he was doing it because she rolled her eyes.  

“Yes, alright,” she laughed.  “I’ll go talk to people.”

“I’ll talk to different people,” Giant Man agreed.  “Shellhead, maybe you’d better stay here and guard him, just in case; I’d hate to come back and find out he’d gotten tagged by graffiti artists in the meantime!”

 

* * *

 

In the end, they didn’t find the shooter, and they didn’t find a cure, so they took the statue-form of Thor back to the mansion with them, Giant Man going large-size and carrying him under his arm like a football.  They deposited the statue in the front yard, and then had to work together to get him inside the door, Tony doing most of the lifting and Giant Man— now normal-sized again, to avoid crashing through the doorframe— and Wasp serving mostly as stabilizers.  

“Whew!” Wasp panted, leaning against Statue Thor when they were done, “Let’s never do  _ that  _ again!”  

“I’ll say,” Tony agreed.  “You know, he’s heavy even when he’s  _ not  _ a statue.  When he is...”  Tony shook his helmet.  “Color me  _ done  _ for the night.”  Or for now, at least, he reflected as he waved his goodbyes to the other Avengers.  He still had to work up ways to fix Thor, as well as adding to the ways to look for the Hulk, since the sub didn’t pan out.

Still, it was relief to change out of his armor.  The chest plate, of course, always had to stay on— although the Dreamscape did serve to remind Tony regularly that there were worse things than the chestplate to have to carry around— but the rest of the armor flowed off him quickly, at this point, practice having made him pretty much perfect at it.  

He slipped up the rear elevator and into his suite, showering quickly, and then slipped back down into the workshop, coming out as if he had been buried in the lab the whole time.  He found Giant Man and Wasp a lot sooner than he had thought he would, standing near the table in Giant Man’s lab.  

“No, I’m going to be working on this Thor thing for a while,” Giant Man was saying.  “You go on up, relax; I know you have a bunch of stuff to work on for tomorrow, now more than before.”

Tony reflected on the  _ of course completely unrelated  _ fact that Jan had a fashion show debuting in a week.

“Do you want me to bring you up a sandwich?” Wasp offered, tilting her head to the side even as she walked towards the elevator.  

“That’d be great, thanks!  Or I may come up first and get it...  Hmm...”

“If you’re going to be coming upstairs,” Tony said from behind them— they both jumped— “Then, Wasp, would you care to join me for a very late dinner?”  He ran a hand through his hair— he had gotten it mostly dry with a hair-dryer— and smiled charmingly.  Jan broke out into a smile.

“I’d be delighted, Tony!”  

He made a show of offering her his arm as they headed upstairs.

 

* * *

 

“No, I’m just saying, Tony, I know some really lovely ladies who are just looking for someone to go to the opera with; you don’t  _ need  _ to get all serious in order to date.”  

“The problem with that, though, Wasp, is that I don’t actually like the opera!”

“Oh, fine.  My point stands, though; heck, I’d go with you to a few parties if you wanted, although I suppose it’d look pretty funny in costume.”  She made a face, then turned towards the kitchen and jumped.  “Jeeze,” she gasped.  “Jarvis, you scared the life out of me!”

“My apologies, miss.”  Jarvis had known Jan van Dyne since she was six years old, and had never, not once, successfully managed to call the Wasp “ma’am.”  “There is soup and sandwiches prepared.”

“Coffee?” Tony asked, hopefully.  “Apparently, I’ve got a long night ahead of me, working out what could turn Thor into the Rock over there.”  He jerked a thumb in the direction of the statue, standing like— well, a rock in the middle of the entryway. 

“Indeed, sir,” said Jarvis.  “And I believe there is also have a great deal of work to be put into synthesizing new uniforms for the Captain, as well.”

Tony winced; he’d managed to forget that particular item on his agenda.

“Oooh, that’s right!” Wasp brightened.  “We have Captain America in the house, ripped somehow from under the very nose government!  How did you manage to score that one, anyway?” she added to Iron Man.

“By getting there first, mostly, and by momentum; assume he’s staying with me, act like he’s staying with me, and everyone believes it’s settled.”

A noise like a throat being cleared came from the library entrance behind them.  “I heard my name?”  

Jan shrieked and jumped, coming down facing the opposite direction and then  _ staring.   _ Tony turned, and then he found himself staring, too.

“Who found you those  _ clothes?”  _ Jan asked in despair, but that was really truly not the first thing Tony noticed.

Captain America was  _ built,  _ for one thing.  Okay, that was obvious even in the costume— the skin-tight leather costume, and who decided that was allowed, anyway? — but now, standing in bland slacks and a button-down shirt in front of them, it was especially obvious how trim his waist was, how muscular and long and  _ powerful  _ his thighs.  He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders as if he were cold, but it worked like a thick cloak, making the shoulders look broader and heavier than they already were— which was, itself, pretty damned heavy!  His hair, it turned out, was blond, falling across oddly familiar blue eyes, and— 

Wait, hold on...

He had a  _ blanket  _ wrapped around his  _ shoulders  _ and— 

More specifically, he had the fucking  _ Cap-ghan  _ wrapped around his shoulders.

“What.”

Where did he get it?  Did Jarvis do this?  But it didn’t seem the sort of thing Jarvis would do, purposely embarrassing Tony like this.  On the other hand, that blanket had been in Tony’s bedroom, in the closet, where it always was, and Tony couldn’t really see  _ Captain America  _ prowling around his bedroom...

“Oooh, out of uniform!” he heard Wasp say.  “Does that mean you get to tell us your identity?”

Captain America had a really great smile, full of light and happiness like a full knife of butter spread over a single hot piece of toast.  Somewhere in the back of Tony’s mind, an alarm bell was going off, ringing and peeling, telling him he had  _ seen this before.   _ But how was that possible?  “Yes,” Captain America was saying.  “The President himself gave me discretion over who I could reveal my identity to.  I can tell anybody I trust, now.”

“Wow,” Tony blurted, feeling dazed at the import of that.  “So you decided to tell  _ us?”  _

Captain America gave him a very intense gaze.  “You, especially,” he rumbled.  

Tony blinked at the force of it.  “I know I’m putting the Avengers up, and Cap, even without being an Avenger, you have to know you’re always welcome here—”  Cap’s eyes couldn’t possibly physically glow, but it almost felt like they were, they were so intense.  “ — But you should also probably know that I’m not the most respectable guy in the world.  I mean, you can’t have looked me up yet, but— hell, you may not even know who I  _ am,  _ yet—”

“You’re Tony Stark.”  Captain America was smiling, stepping towards him, holding out his hand.

Tony smiled, feeling his eyes go a little wild as he  _ shook Captain America’s hand, oh god! _  “Yep, that’s me!”

Captain America ducked his head forward and to the side, a movement that set off those familiar bells again.  “And I’m Steve Rogers,” he said.

Wow, he got to know Captain America’s name!  And it was—

Wait.

_ Wait?! _

Did he say...  

_ Hold the fucking phone!   _

_...What?! _

“Steve Rogers,” Tony repeated, still shaking his hand.  He could see it now, though, the familiar shade of those azure eyes, the full, almost-pouty lower lip, the square jaw that really did fit his face better with a lot of muscle connected to it...  The prominent cheekbones, now in a wider-set face...  The hair was the same, of course, and the posture— although subtly different from his posture in the uniform— “You’re  _ Steve Rogers.” _

“Yes.”  

Tony felt like the top of his head was about to blow off, like he was a hot air balloon about to float away.  What was  _ happening?  _

Steve was smiling at him, that was what was happening, warmth and joy and  _ love,  _ that was straight-up, honest-to-god  _ love  _ in his eyes!  In his  _ soulmate’s eyes!   _ Because his soulmate!  Was right! Here!  “And you’re Tony Stark.”

Tony nodded rapidly, like a bobble-head doll, and then realized he was doing it and cleared his throat instead.  “Yes,” he said.  “And I’m shaking your hand.”

Steve beamed.  “You are!”  His fingers twitched in Tony’s, almost as if he wanted to stroke Tony’s wrist, and Tony promptly ascended to another plain of existence.  He wanted to say something else, but— 

Words.  

They weren’t happening.  

He grinned dazedly around a tongue that felt thick and stupid, and at least Steve was smiling back at him,  _ Steve was,  _ because he was  _ right here—! _

They beamed at each other, full of the sunshine of each other’s mutual substantiality.

“Er...  What’s happening?”

Giant Man must have come up from downstairs, Tony surmised, not bothering to look away from Steve.

“Shhh!  Tony and Cap just introduced themselves and then started shaking hands, and if they go another fifteen seconds it’ll have been a full three minutes!”

Well.

Alright, maybe Jan had a point.

But on the other hand, Tony didn’t want to stop  _ touching  _ Steve anytime soon...  “Clothes!” he blurted, taking his hand back.  

Steve looked startled, and also— Tony’s heart spasmed— a little sad to be letting go of Tony.  “Pardon?”  

“Clothes— uniforms, I mean!  I’m supposed to make you some.  I should... measure you.  For that.”

“Don’t you have my measurements on reco—”

“I’m sure those aren’t the most accurate, I mean, look at those pants!  They came from those measurements, and they’re awfully tight—”  Tony temporarily lost the ability to breathe.  “Ah.  Across the...”

Steve was cottoning on now, though.  “Across the back, yeah; it’s a little hard—”

He broke off, and looked appalled and, shooting a quick glance at the Wasp, mortified.

“To move,” Tony filled in for him.  “Hard  _ to move.  _  Yes.  We should...”

“New ones; definitely.”  Steve grinned just enough to warn Tony about the mischief he was about to pull, then went on earnestly, “Thanks, Mr. Stark.  That’s awfully generous of you.”

Why that little piece of— “I have a measuring tape upstairs,” Tony lied blatantly.  His voice came out a bit strangled, but that was alright.

“Right!  Upstairs!”

“Shouldn’t I come with you?” called the Wasp which, okay, would not have made much sense if Tony didn’t know who she really was, but he did and also it  _ didn’t matter right now. _

“Definitely not!”  Steve shouted back, already taking the steps two at a time.

“Well, you’ll at least come eat with us, right?”

“Definitely not that, either!” Tony replied, and then they were pounding up the stairs together and he was tugging Steve across the hall and ushering him into his room.

 

* * *

 

When they door closed, though, Tony paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath— alright, and pinching himself, because this was  _ just a little bit _ hard for him to believe. 

“It’s real,” Steve promised, answering a thought Tony hadn’t actually voiced aloud; but then, it stood to reason that Steve would have known what he was thinking.  He opened his eyes and looked over at Steve, smiling crookedly.  “It’s real, I promise.  I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, but, well...”

“No, I understand!” Tony said immediately.  “Classified.  And then—”

“Opportunity,” Steve filled in, nodding gratefully.  “No chance.”

“You told me as soon as you could; no, it’s not that, it’s just...”  He gestured at the solid,  _ shockingly enormous  _ form of Steve, which made his bedroom seem somehow smaller, and also significantly warmer.  “You’re  _ here,”  _ he said.  “I didn’t even know...  I never even  _ thought...!”  _

Steve reached for him abruptly, almost instinctively.  “I really believed I was dead,” he said, his voice shaking, and now Tony was reaching for him, too.  “I thought I was never going to get to have this, never going to get to—”

He grabbed Tony’s arms around the meaty part of the biceps and gently, steadily, moved him in closer, wrapping his arms around him, shifting in even closer when Tony immediately hugged him back.  “This,” Steve breathed, his voice coming on a wave of warm air across Tony’s cheek and mouth.  “I thought I was never going to get this, and now I  _ can—” _

Tony let his head fall back, and moaned, then rocked his head from side to side and rolled around until it had enough momentum to come back upright, overcoming the fact that approximately all of his muscles had just turned to jelly.  Steve raised a hand to brush through his hair, and a wonderful warmth spread up Tony’s spine like heat from a hot water bottle.  

After that, of course, it was just the most natural thing in the world to lean in and kiss Steve.  Steve’s response— a high-pitched yip of surprised delight— was like a shot of Irish coffee on a cold day, a comforting warmth that curled and spread through Tony, from his stomach outward.  

Tony hummed delightedly into Steve’s mouth, nibbling at his lower lip, sucking deeply on his tongue, until Steve gasped and moaned and shook in Tony’s arms— and then retaliated, taking up the initiative and pushing back, his mouth moving against Tony’s, his hands— 

“Oh,  _ God!”  _ Tony exclaimed.   Steve had just run his hands under Tony’s shirt at the small of his back.  It wasn’t even that inflammatory a touch, really, but it was  _ Steve  _ and it was  _ real  _ and it was  _ skin, touching skin,  _ and Tony couldn’t—

“Come to bed,” Tony said urgently, hands grasping at the soft linen of Steve’s shirt.  Then he undermined his words immediately by kissing him again.  “Now, please— come to bed, with me, right now—”

“Yes,” Steve said fervently.  Tony almost objected when Steve pulled away— Tony’s brain was  _ gone,  _ at this point _ —  _ but then Steve was pulling off his shirt, cuffs loosed but otherwise still buttoned, and popping open his belt.  Tony watched the movement of his hand and wrist as he pulled the leather back and felt dizzy; something in the angle of the arm, the absentminded confidence of the movement...

Without even realizing he had done it, Tony dropped to his knees, nuzzling at the inseam of Steve’s khakis, and, while he was down there, running his hands up the back of Steve’s thighs to grasp his ass.  (Which had always been pert, but now was  _ goddamned amazing,  _ Jesus Christ, a work of goddamned  _ art!)   _ Steve leaned into his touch— alright, Tony might have pushed a little bit— but then Tony sat back on his heels, effectively  taking himself out of range.

He looked up and met Steve’s eyes— as dark and desperate as his own— and said, “Pants off.”

Steve just blinked at him, lust-stupid.

“Pants  _ off,  _ Steve!  I want—”  He choked, swallowed, and tried again.  “I want to feel your  _ skin,  _ alright?  Not just— I’ve had enough of  _ cloth,  _ Steve!  I need—”

Steve had both pants and briefs around his ankles before Tony could finish the rest of the sentence, and then Tony was moaning and leaning in, nuzzling against Steve’s length, feeling the sweet, delicate warmth of it against his cheek and lips.  

_ “Tony,” _ Steve said, sounding broken, and then, “Oh, god, I’m still wearing my socks.”

Tony laughed against him.  “You’re still wearing your undershirt, too,” he said.  “Come to bed.”  Still brushing against Steve, and smiling broadly, he looked up.  “Let’s go—”  He gestured behind him, where he was reasonably certain the California King was still located.  “Come on.”

“Yes,” Steve swore, and then reached for Tony.  And then the world shifted at an alarming angle, because Steve had  _ picked Tony up and was carrying him,  _ one arm supporting him under his ass, the other arm wrapped around his shoulders for stability.  Steve casually crossed the room— Tony’s weight didn’t seem to bother him  _ at all,  _ even with the chestplate, and Tony’s eyes were widening as he considered the possibilities and implications of that— and then Steve  _ literally tossed him onto the bed  _ before stripped out of his shirt and socks and joining him.  

“Holy shit!”

Tony pulled off every last scrap of clothing he was wearing in some kind of a land speed record until the only thing he was wearing was the chestpiece, then rolled so that he was pressed against Steve from chest to knees.  

“Do you have,” he said direly, “ _ any  _ idea—”  He licked a stripe up Steve’s neck, and Steve bucked up into him.  “ — how  _ astonishingly  _ sexy you are?!”

Steve’s arms— warm, strong, and now  _ enormous  _ — wrapped around him, one hand between his shoulder blades pressing Tony into Steve, the other sliding down, past his waist, grabbing and cupping the round swell of his ass, hand tightening just right for Tony to moan and thrash in his arms.  Which got him precisely  _ nowhere,  _ of course, because Steve was also  _ Captain America  _ and if he wanted to hold Tony still, he would...

Tony moaned again, louder.  

“Shhh,” Steve soothed him.  “It’s okay, I’m here, we can—”

“No, no, hey, I’m not complaining,” Tony gasped.  “I just—  _ you.”   _ He gave the final word some weight, as if it were sufficient to explain everything he was thinking and feeling.  And it sort of was, in a way.  Steve’s body spread out beneath him, and god, there was just  _ acres  _ of him, and he was  _ right here...   _ “God, I want to touch you everywhere,” Tony said, blinking.

Steve growled, and kissed him, hands pressing again so that Tony could feel them moving over his back, and he was surrounded, it was an ocean of Steve, hell, Tony could  _ smell  _ him, fresh soap and an undertone of leather-and-metal, and everywhere he turned, every sense he focused on, there was  _ more Steve.   _ “Jesus.  Steve, stop.”

Steve froze.

“Not— nothing bad, I just—”  Tony ground into Steve so he could feel how hard he was; Steve  _ blew his mind  _ by licking his lips in unconscious response.  “Holy shit— it’s a lot, is all, almost too much, and I want—”

Steve met his gaze, eyes so dark Tony could barely even tell they were blue.  “What do you want?” he asked.  The hand on Tony’s ass squeezed, then rubbed, again without apparent consideration on Steve’s part.  “Anything, Tony.”

At that, it was like a switch had flipped in Tony’s brain.  He actually started thinking about it, started seriously considering the possibilities available to them.  This wasn’t the Dreamscape, and they weren’t  _ limited,  _ here, by the need to keep something between them.  Steve was right:  they could do  _ anything.   _ “Do  _ you  _ have a preference?” he asked, turning it over in his mind.  Oral, anal, frottage, intercrural, catching, pitching, sixty-nining— Christ, it was like a wonderful mad-lib of delicious things he could do to Steve...

“I barely even know,” Steve said ruefully.  “And it’s— well, you know.  It’s  _ been  _ a while.”  

Tony blinked, sorting through the options, and then worked his hand underneath himself enough to run it down Steve’s abs to grasp his cock, direct and firm enough not to tease.  “Can I ride you?” he asked, stroking, enjoying the way Steve threw his head back and gasped at the touch.  There was just a couple drops of wetness at the tip of Steve’s dick, and Tony rubbed them around with his thumb before stroking down and back up again.  The hand on his ass tightened distractingly, and he smirked.  “Would that be okay?  We don’t have to, there are other things—”

_ “Please!”  _ Steve broke in, cutting him off.  He was flushed, pink all over his shoulders and neck, but red particularly in the cheeks, and Tony had a flash of memory of Steve in the Dreamscape blushing in an almost identical pattern.  

“Okay,” he said, voice gentle, easy.  “Okay, let’s—”  He crawled upwards, towards the head of the bed but also so that he was coming up Steve’s body a bit, and reached for the side table where there were supplies.  “Do you want a condom?”

“Do I?”  Steve’s mouth landed on his side, beside the strap of the chestplate, right where the skin was extra-sensitive from the abrasion.  He licked and sucked, and Tony shivered and let him, trying to focus— not very successfully— on retrieving the lube.  

“If you don’t know, then yes— oh god— Steve,  _ please!”   _

Steve smiled; Tony could feel it against his ribs.  Tony folded back down, this time coming to rest on his knees beside Steve, facing him.  Steve propped himself up on one arm, and Tony curled a hand around Steve’s neck and leaned in, tasting him again, sweet and musky and  _ real  _ and  _ his Steve—  _ god, he hadn’t gotten to taste him in the Dreamscape, had never known what he was missing— kissing him in short, teasing, hit-and-dip kisses that left Steve smiling and chasing Tony’s mouth.  

Tony slicked his hands with lube, then reached behind and into his own crack, circling his hole twice before slipping a finger inside himself.  He felt his mouth drop open— nothing so substantial as a gasp— and it must have clued Steve in to what he was doing, because Steve blurted out, “Oh god— may I?” and Tony was pretty sure that by the end of this his brain would have liquified and dribbled out his nostrils, because  _ holy hell Steve fingering him open, yes, please!   _

“Yeah,” he managed, “That would be fine.”

He poured more lube onto Steve’s hands and moved closer, shoving Steve onto his back again and swinging a leg over so that he straddled Steve’s upper stomach.  And, okay, it really was not his fault that he got distracted at that point, because Steve’s chest was  _ right there,  _ and flushed, and it would take a stronger man than Tony was to resist thumbing and scratching at those nipples.  When he pinched the right one, twisting lightly, Steve arched his back so hard he came right off the bed, and Tony grinned fiercely to himself.

Steve wasn’t completely distracted, though, and Tony could feel his slick hands sliding around behind him, one blunt finger finding its mark and slipping inside.  “Yes,” Tony said, grinding backwards even as he scratched Steve’s right pec again.  “Yes, please, Steve.”  

“Oh my  _ God,”  _ Steve said.  “Tony,  _ Tony—  _ This is my hand, Tony.”

“Fuck, I noticed!”  Tony pushed back on it again, and Steve’s thumb pressed into his skin to hold him steady, a pressure on Tony’s taint that would drive him crazy sooner or later— and probably sooner.  

“Just my hands, Tony, nothing else.”

“If you get a move on, you can fix that—  _ Fuck!”  _

Steve had pushed in a second finger beside the first, and was twisting them slowly.  

“No blankets,” Steve said, and for a moment it was nonsensical until Tony realized what he meant, what he had been meaning.  He shuddered, hard, and noticed that his cock was leaking, a thin, glistening string of precome that had dripped onto Steve’s chest, and that was— 

“Holy shit!”

“No plastic wrap.”  Steve scissored his fingers, and Tony couldn’t resist bending down to kiss him, mouth moving from Steve’s lips to his cheek— so smooth! — to his neck, which made Steve burble and press his fingers in suddenly harder.  

“Steve,” Tony chanted, “Steve, please, please Steve, please—”

Steve pulled out and came back with three fingers, and Tony dropped to his elbows with a sob, changing the angle, pushing the chestplate into Steve’s chest and face.  He dropped kisses all over the upside of Steve’s head, into the hair, the forehead, the tips of the ears— whatever was available.  He rested his mouth at the corner of Steve’s temple for a moment, breathing open-mouthed and then sucking a wide kiss there, the kind that was very wet and even more possessive.

“Ah!   _ Tony! _  Oh, God, you feel...”

“What?”  Tony’s voice came out thick and wobbly.  “How do I feel?”

Steve didn’t answer immediately, and for a moment, the only sounds in the bedroom were the sounds of sex:  Steve’s harsh breathing, Tony’s little whimpering grunts in the back of his throat, the wet squelching noise of Steve’s fingers moving in him...  When Steve did speak, his voice came out small and humbled.  “...Perfect,” he said.  “You feel perfect, Tony.”  

He tipped his head back, craning his neck so that Tony could reach his lips with his kisses.  Tony did, reaching down and licking into Steve’s mouth one more time before pushing up again, reaching around in the blankets until he found the condom.  “Come on,” he said.  “Here, let me—”  He rolled the condom on in three quick, efficient movements, then undid all that efficiency by jacking Steve a few more times through the condom just to enjoy the overwhelmed, gasping sounds he made.   

God, he was beautiful!  Steve’s head was thrown back in ecstasy, his chest pink with flush, nipples standing out dark from when Tony had been molesting them.  His arms were pressing back, away from Tony— he’d pulled back when Tony put the condom on— and his hips were slightly canted up.  He had abs for  _ days,  _ too; seriously, if Tony hadn’t known that Steve— that  _ Captain America,  _ and he wasn’t even  _ close  _ to having dealt with the implications of  _ that—  _ was the pinnacle of human perfection, he would have wondered if maybe Steve had more muscles than were actually supposed to exist in human anatomy.

Steve’s head tilted down again to watch, first Tony’s hand as it moved on his erection— okay, lubing the condom had been necessary, but it was possible that Tony had gotten a little distracted after that— and then Tony’s face as he watched Steve watch him.  “Tony,” Steve said again, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“You know, if the only word you can manage right now is my name, I must be doing an okay job,” he said, and Steve groaned.

“Please,” he begged.  “Don’t— oh, God, Tony, don’t  _ tease  _ so!”  

“Am I teasing?” Tony asked, adding a twist on the way back up.

Steve opened his eyes— they had fallen shut— and glared.  “I thought you said you were going to ride me,” he challenged.

Tony let go of his cock and reached out with both hands, taking Steve’s face between them and bringing him close.  He kissed him, deeply, deeper than they had yet, plunging and biting and  _ claiming,  _ until Steve was panting and boneless in his arms.

Then he let him go.

“Believe me,” he said, grinning.  The smile felt crazy and uncontrolled on his face, a fey thing.  “I am  _ definitely  _ going to ride you.”

He swung a leg over Steve’s hips, reaching behind him to line things up.  

He sunk down in one smooth motion; Steve was large, but no so large that three fingers and plenty of time hadn’t been enough to open him up.  It felt  _ amazing,  _ and in more ways than one.  Tony had expected the physical— after all, this had always been fun before, and let’s face it, Steve was one hell of a specimen.  And, hell, he supposed he should have expected the emotion, too, but that had never— there had never been  _ anyone  _ who— 

Tony closed his eyes, holding onto Steve’s shoulders tight as he rode him, and revelled in the overwhelmingness of it all, and in the feeling of openness, and fullness, and pleasure sparking all over him whenever Steve’s cock brushed his prostate.  But just as powerful— and far more surprising— were the vulnerability, and passion, and love, all of them swarming Tony with ruinous intensity.  

“Tony,” Steve said, and reached up to brush at Tony’s cheek.   _ “Tony.”   _

Tony choked and sobbed, undone by the tenderness of the gesture, and by  _ Steve,  _ he  _ had a Steve,  _ finally, after all these years alone...

“Don’t cry!  Oh no... Tony...”  

“It’s okay,” Tony said, smiling through the tears and the well of hopeless love.  “I’m good.  They’re happy tears.”

Steve smiled back, his own eyes also looking misty, and then sat up.  He wrapped his arms around Tony, stilling him; one went around Tony’s shoulders, the other around his lower back, essentially, Tony realized, keeping Steve sheathed.  

“Here,” Steve said, and flipped them, rolling so that Tony was on his back, legs still locked around Steve’s torso; Steve was on his knees, and a bit of shifting got them under both men enough that Steve had some leverage.  “We’re gonna go, okay?  We’re gonna do this,” Steve said, but it was obvious he was checking in, making sure that was alright with Tony, giving Tony a chance to stop if he needed to.

“That’s good,” Tony rasped instead.  “Do it, Steve.  No, wait!”  

Steve froze.

“I love you,” Tony said, and his tears on his lips were salty, but true.

Steve kissed him, once, sweetly.  “I love you, too,” he whispered.  “Tony.   _ Soulmate.   _ I love you, too.”  He brushed Tony’s hair back where it had fallen into his eyes.

Tony smiled up at him and flexed, then reached down and took himself in hand.  “Do it,” he said, his voice still rough.

Steve did it.

It was like fucking a freight train, Tony would think later; powerful, relentless, pistoning forward and back and forward and back, and the changed angle was enough that instead of brushing his prostate sometimes, Steve was hitting it with every stroke, and Tony completely lost track of literally everything except the movement of Steve’s body into his, but he was pretty sure it was less than two minutes before he was coming into his own fist, and Steve was straining and trembling, and then they were collapsing together into a sweaty, sticky,  _ ecstatically happy  _ pile.

 

* * *

 

“Is this okay?  I’m not squishing you, am I?  I know the chestplate...”

“No, definitely not.”  Steve smiled dopily at him.  “Besides, after the serum— after Project: Rebirth, I mean, which I can  _ tell you about, now—” _  Steve wriggled a little under him, and Tony thought it wasn’t a  _ getting comfy  _ wriggle as much as a  _ pure glee  _ one.  “ — well, let’s just say this body can handle a lot.”

Tony grinned.  “You do look different,” he observed.  

“Not bad, though?” Steve asked, hesitantly.  “I— you seemed to, uh.  You seemed to like the other one...”  He blushed; Tony rather thought he might be remember that time on the Dreamscape futon.

“I like them both,” Tony said honestly.  “Mostly, I like that it’s  _ you,  _ which is...”  He waved a lazy hand in the air, searching for words, finally settling on, “...impossible, but wonderful.”

Steve brought a hand to Tony’s face, brushing a thumb over his lips and cheek.  “Tony,” he started, but then didn’t say anything else, staring into Tony’s eyes and Tony’s face and then dropping his eyes to look at Tony’s  _ mouth,  _ and that was—   

“Steve?”  

When Tony spoke, he could feel his cheek move under Steve’s hand.

Steve smiled helplessly again, bringing his other hand up to cup Tony’s face, too.  “I’m glad I’m not dead,” he whispered, pressing a kiss against Tony’s temple.

Tony snuggled closer.  “I’m glad you’re not dead, too,” he said softly.

 

* * *

 

“So, tell me about this whole  _ being Captain America  _ thing.”

 

* * *

 

Tony got out of bed not long after that, head spinning with the implications and possibilities of being the soulmate of Captain America.  He had a lot of questions still to ask:  Did Steve want to reveal his secret identity to the world?  Or just the Avengers; he’d already outed himself to Jan.  And did he want to come out in the more traditional, Rosie O’Donnell sense of the phrase?  And if so, did he want to tell people he was with Tony? 

And honestly, if it weren’t for their growling bellies, he would have stayed right there in bed with Steve and asked them.  But Steve hadn’t eaten in hours, and Tony hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so he slipped out of bed and pulled on his discarded shirt and trousers.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Steve asked, lounging in a broad expanse of naked skin in the middle of Tony’s enormous bed.  

“Sweetheart, I’m only barely convinced I want to go in the first place,” Tony said honestly.  “And if you don’t throw a blanket over all of that, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave at all.”

Steve grinned, and pulled a pillow over to cover his junk.

“Oh, that’s much better.”  Tony was feeling too fond to be properly sarcastic, though.

“I’ll be back in a bit, and I’ll have a tray,” he promised, slipping out the door on silent feet.

He hadn’t made it two steps into the kitchen, though, before Wasp was stepping right up and confronting him.  “Tell me you didn’t just debauch Captain America,” she demanded immediately.

“That’s none of your business,” Tony blocked, but then he immediately winced.  It was a bad reply, weak and practically an admission of guilt, and they both knew it.  “It’s not what you think, I mean.  He’s...”  

But he couldn’t say anything, he realized.  He didn’t know for sure that Steve wanted to be out, and he certainly didn’t know that Steve wanted to tell anyone they were soulmates.  

“He’s...”

“Oh, no,  _ Tony...”   _

“He’s none of your business, is what he is,” Tony plunked for.  Which was still just as weak a defense as it had been fifteen seconds ago, but he really didn’t have anything better to hand.

“He’s an American hero, Tony!  He’s an  _ icon—  _ and he’s just woken up!  He’s probably very confused, the poor dear.  You can’t just... just...  _ fling  _ yourself at him!  You have to give him time to adjust— you  _ might  _ even think about taking him on a  _ date  _ or two before you—” 

She stopped, looking taken aback.  “What’s so funny?”

But Tony, hiccoughing with laughter, couldn’t answer.  All he could think of as he walked towards the refrigerator was Chinese food, and puppies, and the entirety of  _ The Fellowship of the Ring.   _ “‘A’ date,” he wheezed, shaking his head, pulling the neatly-wrapped sandwich with his name on it onto a plate.  “Sure.”

Wasp frowned, but followed him around the kitchen.  “I don’t see why you think it’s so funny,” she said.  “You’re a really great guy, Tony!  I’m sure Cap would be happy to date you, even if you do have a soulmate out there.”  

“I’d be thrilled to,” Steve said from the doorway.  Wasp spun around, looking startled and exasperated.

“How do you move that quietly?” she demanded.  “That’s twice today you’ve snuck up on me, and I’ve only known you for ten hours!”

“Well, it helps that you were talking both times.”  Steve said it seriously, but his eyes were smiling. 

So was Tony— smiling, that is.  He suspected he would be whenever Steve was around.  

The Wasp brushed it off.  “So— you’d be willing to date Tony?” she said, smiling triumphantly at the two of them.  

“‘Course I would,” Steve said, “He’s my soulmate.”  And, stepping towards Tony, he brushed a possessive kiss over Tony’s forehead.  

Jan might have said something else, or she might not; honestly, either way, Tony was pretty sure he and Steve wouldn’t have noticed.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Steve dressed himself in some of the simple clothes Tony had provided, and headed out to 74th to pick up a bouquet of chrysanthemums, then met up with Tony in the entryway of the mansion.

“Hey,” Tony said.  His face was probably lighting up immediately upon seeing Steve, but— eh, that was going to keep happening for a while.  “Ready to go?  What’s wrong?”  Steve had a shocked look on his face.  

“Nothing,” Steve said.  “I just... inflation?”

Tony laughed sympathetically, and they headed out, ambling companionably across the street and up the library steps, their chatter hopping from the potential significance of the Mars rovers SI was building parts for, to favorite science fiction novels, to the pros and cons of schoolchildren reading heavily religious literature (Steve was pro, Tony was neither pro nor contra but cheerfully willing to play devil’s advocate— or Screwtape’s advocate, as the case might be.)  They didn’t hurry; the day was nice and sunny, with a light breeze, and anyway it wasn’t a long walk.

There was a slight pause when they came into the library, both of them hesitating before heading up the inside stairs; but then Tony gestured Steve to go on ahead, and so Steve took the lead, heading up to the circulation desk.  He lingered as if about to ask someone there to help him, and Tony realized that of course, in the Dreamscape, that was where Miss Winnie hung out, the circulation desk.  In real life, though, her throne was at the reference desk, further in, and Steve must have seen her out of the corner of his eye, because he kept walking.  

The reference desk was technically an octagonal island in the middle of the floor, but the part where you came up to it to face the librarian was aimed at the side of the building, with the computer facing away from the entrance so that Miss Winnie actually had her shoulder turned to them.  That didn’t mean she wasn’t aware of their approach, though, and she turned as they came within speaking distance, opening her mouth to ask how she could help them, only to pause and shut it again, looking confused and surprised, her eyes darting from Tony to Steve, obviously doing the math but not quite believing the total she came up with.  

“Winnie?” Steve asked, and suddenly she was tearing up.  No one else called her that, Tony realized.  Everyone always said  _ Miss  _ Winnie, because she’d been there  _ forever  _ and had trained them all up.

Except Steve, of course.  Steve had met her when she was just a girl, herself.

“These are for you.  They— thank you,” he said simply, holding out the chrysanthemums.  

Miss Winnie came out and wrapped him in a hug, looking small and fragile against the Steve’s taller and now broader frame, but her face was fierce as she took him in her arms.  “Not so dead after all,” she laughed wetly, her half-moon glasses crooked on her nose from how hard she had pressed against him.  “Try to stay that way, this time.”

Steve’s arms tightened around her, and his lips, turned towards Tony where Miss Winnie couldn’t see them, pressed together to hold in some strong emotion. “Yeah,” Steve said.  His voice was hoarse.  “You know, I think I’m going to do my best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few words of gratitude: 
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Valmasy, for beta-reading this nonsense. Thanks to Priya, for sanity-checking the sexy bits and reassuring me that it does make sense. Thanks to adarksweetness, for encouraging w/ cheer-reading.
> 
> To the Bringing Food to the Lab Imzy community and Discord channel, for support.
> 
> And to all the readers who commented, frequently making me beam-- thank you. It was so much easier to work on this knowing that y'all wanted to read it. *hugs for all*


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